Sinspawn
by JosephineSilver
Summary: "Sin always returns for its spawn." That's what they say. That's what they know. SPAWN verb \ˈspȯn, ˈspän\ 1) to cause (something) to develop or begin : to produce or create (something) 2) product, offspring Tidus' arrival in Spira goes differently. Jecht approves. ...Auron did not sign up for this (but we all know he really did).
1. First Chapter

_"We called it Sin."_ Auron had said of the giant wave of incoming death. It had formed like an enormous sphere of gravity (and physics) defying water - something that should be impossible out of the specialized fields of a Blitz arena - however the water seemed to be simply the surface, as underneath the undulating waves swarmed countless shapeless _things_ \- fiends, rare already in Zanarkand, the types of which Tidus had never seen before. They rained down from the sky, from the sphere, and screams and destruction followed their arrival.

Tidus simply stared at the thing - Sin - for a moment, hand sweaty and nervously clenching and unclenching around the hilt of the blade Auron had passed to him, the sword that was supposedly from his father. A jolt to the bridge he was standing on - the arrival of more of those strange turtle-shell bird fiends - broke him out of his reverie. Auron, he saw, was already quite a ways ahead.

"Hey, wait for me!" He called out, rushing forward at a steady jog. He would've gone faster - as a Blitz player his fitness and lung capacity were key - but the bridge was slowly breaking down under the continued onslaught of the fiends and with the unfamiliar heft of a large broadsword in his hands, his center of gravity, his balance, was thrown right off.

Auron, of course, did not deign to answer Tidus with words, didn't acknowledge him at all except to unsheathe his own blade as he faced the fiends that had amassed at their front. "These ones don't matter," Auron barked at Tidus as the younger boy ran up next to him. "We cut through and move on!"

Tidus blinked. "Wha-"

And just like that, Auron was gone, cutting a swathe through the fiends. But, much like the hydra of legend, for every fiend that fell, vanishing into crystal-prism rainbow lights, two more, three more, took its place, surrounding Tidus.

The blonde teenager grit his teeth. Typical of Auron - reappear for the first time in months, "sorry I missed your birthday kid, here, have a sword," a couple of cryptic statements thrown Tidus' way, and then - "you're on your own."

Tidus had been eight, maybe seven, when Auron first became a permanent fixture in his life. From day one, the very moment they had met, Tidus had been enrolled into the School of Hard Knocks - AKA, the Do It Yourself School. Auron had been his only teacher, and he had been a big believer in 'achievements through ignorance' (also suffering). Nothing had ever made Auron prouder than when Tidus had figured out the purpose behind a lesson on his own, and he disliked giving hints or help (conversely, he _loved_ giving orders).

Much like the one he'd just barked Tidus' way.

So. Another lesson, then. Thankfully, a more straightforward one then some Tidus had suffered through over the years - namely, the ones that taught him 'morals' and 'valuable life lessons.' No, the purpose of _this_ particular lesson would have been obvious to anyone that had known Auron for any significant amount of time - Tidus winning that race against no-one with a score of roughly ten years.

Auron wanted to see how he'd survive. He'd given him a sword, and now his work was done - if Tidus didn't live through this, then he just wasn't worth the effort.

So, with a scowl on his face that did a passable job of hiding his fear and a shout filled with bravado ("get out of my city!") that just covered the tremble in his voice, the blond leapt forward with an impressive amount of force, using the leg strength gained from Blitz to aid in propelling him into the fray. Having no true idea of how to wield the sword he had been given in anyway resembling skilled, he simply angled the broad blade so that the majority of the sharp edges faced towards the fiends and away from him, and swung it wildly, like a bat.

It was crude, ungraceful, and compared to Auron's conservative movements, completely wasteful. However, even if it was not the most _efficient_ way of destroying fiends, it certainly was a _sufficient_ alternative. Years of Blitzball had corded the muscles in Tidus' arms, legs and core as strong as iron, and a fair amount can be said for a sharp, weighted blade with a hefty momentum behind its swings.

Briefly, Tidus wondered if this would be easier if the sword he held was an axe… Probably. Auron had told him before that he was something akin to a human incarnation of 'blunt force trauma inflicted on the unsuspecting and unwilling.' Translating that, an axe seemed like an appropriate weapon for Tidus.

After a while, even Tidus, with his near superhuman endurance, began to feel the strain of swinging around a blade of heavy, tempered metal. Auron, now _way_ ahead of him, had an undoubtedly heavier sword, due to the blade being both thicker and larger than Tidus' own, yet still seemed to be mowing his way through fiends near effortlessly. If there was one thing Tidus had learnt throughout his years of blitz, it was that experience more often than not triumphed over talent or pure brute strength. When it came to swordplay, Auron apparently excelled in all three. Tidus himself only in one area, strength - maybe being able to claim a small piece of talent considering that even with no prior training, he wasn't dead yet. Regardless of his so far miraculous ability to not drown amongst the wave after wave of fiends that just kept coming, all his instincts and muscle memory were ingrained towards blitz - a sport that, while brutal, was decidedly _not fatal_.

Prepared for lethal combat, even against fiends, he was _not_. Frankly, Tidus was amazed at how well he was keeping it together. Zanarkand, the city of light on the water, the hub of civilization, his _home_ was under an attack the likes of which he had never seen, people were being torn apart around him - he could hear the screams, smell the blood - but he felt almost completely detached from what was happening. A dreamlike quality had overtaken the world around him, and as he finally caught up to Auron, breaking through a sudden clear spot in the crowd of fiends, he wondered if maybe that wasn't the case - he'd messed up trying to do his old man's shot and injured his head, and was now stuck in some bizarre, concussion induced nightmare?

It was honestly scary that Tidus did not know which scenario made sense.

Auron sent him a look over the top of his collar, all _about time you got here_ and _what took you so long_ with just a hint of relief, maybe pride, showing from deep, _deep_ within.

Next to Auron, Tidus felt he could finally take a breath. He was _safe_. And wasn't that a weird thought to have, standing amongst the crumbling ruin of one of Zanarkand's main bridges, running from downtown to the stadium - the idea of safety was ludicrous. But Auron, for all his gruff demeanor and complete willingness to throw Tidus straight into the deep end with no safety net, was one of the few constants that Tidus had had in his life, and the younger knew that when it came down to it he could always count on Auron to have his back. Just because he'd been alone amongst the fiends before didn't mean he'd been _on his own_. At the first sight of truly life threatening danger or a situation he couldn't handle, Auron would have stepped in.

Now, with Auron guarding his back and Tidus doing a more than likely laughable job of returning the favor, he took in the wounded sight of his city properly for the first time since this mess had started.

It was always said that Zanarkand had two things in abundance - lights, and the sea. The air was always filled with the thick scent of salt and the whispering of waves, and the waters of said sea always reflected faithfully back at the city its own sparkling image.

Tidus had grown from child to not-quite-adult with firsthand knowledge of the relationship between the ocean, the lights, and Zanarkand. Raised on a small boat that had belonged to his father, who, even though he had made a frankly ridiculous amount of gil with his Blitzball career, had never even considered moving further into the city, or even into, you know, an _actual house_ \- the ocean was always there. As far out on the outskirts of the city as they were, Tidus rarely saw the bright lights that came from the hub of the city fall onto the water. But the boat had its own lights, placed underneath hull and deck, and they lit the night water with an eerie white-blue.

After Jecht (the ass) had up and died (vanished) on them, and his mother had wasted away, Tidus was left with no money, and no guardian to watch over him.

Auron, apparently a 'friend' of his old man - and what a joke _that_ was, Jecht _didn't have_ friends - had stepped up into the role of his primary caretaker, by which Tidus meant he sat in the boat and brooded intensely while watching (literally) Tidus at all times for the first fortnight, before deciding that 'the runt can handle himself' and simply just popping in for meals and to sleep, occasionally deigning to spend a few hours in his company, as if making sure Tidus hadn't yet starved to death, managed to get himself killed or something similar.

(Tidus wasn't sure what Jecht had told Auron about him, but the few mentions were enough to bring him to scowl. He was _not_ a cry baby, dammit.)

Now, Tidus didn't even want to think of that little boat that held so many of his memories, his _entire childhood_ , both the good and the bad. Because if the city itself - all light-shine and ocean-glow and timeless pride that had weathered the ages - was falling apart like this, what hope did a little old houseboat have?

 _"Tidus."_ Auron's voice from next to him was a sharp rebuttal, but when Tidus glanced over at the older man, what was visible of his face, particularly his eyes, were almost unbelievably gentle, a bone deep kind of understanding resonating through.

Maybe, somehow, Auron had experienced something like this before - it had been obvious from the very first second that he had appeared that he was very much _not_ someone native to Zanarkand. It was true that the people of Zanarkand did not concern themselves overmuch with the concerns of places and people of the world outside, but they _did_ know that they were out there. With the way he had just _shown up_ in their lives, Tidus and his mother's, with no place to call home and nothing but the clothes on his back, it was highly likely he simply had no other place to go.

Maybe Auron's hometown had faced this same kind of destruction, once.

"Focus," Auron said. His head jerked forward. "There's something far more dangerous up ahead."

Tidus followed Auron's gesture, and his gaze locked onto what he could only describe as a _tentacle monster_ that seemed to have affixed itself to the bridge. Every couple of seconds, a tremble would shudder through the fiend's tentacles and glowing blue pods - that upon hitting the ground unfurled into the strange winged fiends that made up the hoard - shook loose.

Tidus gaped. _Fiends did not work like that_.

"Hurry," Auron said, and surged forward, sword raised in preparation to cut through fiends.

But then he paused, blade hovering almost _uncertainly_ \- and that was truly terrifying, Auron _didn't do_ 'hesitant,' - as the smaller fiends that came from the larger body hissed and skittishly balked away from Auron, glancing from the older man to Tidus and then shaking, hunched over, like a dog bracing for a kick.

Tidus was positioned behind Auron, so he couldn't see the older man's face, and the heavy, loose material that made up his red outer jacket did a very good job of hiding the lines of his back - but he saw the way shoulders dropped and head tilted. Translated vocally, his body language clearly growled out a flat _what_. Tidus, personally, had to agree. In no way did he know much (if anything) about fiends, but there was one piece of general knowledge that _everyone_ knew - when a human was in range, a fiend _attacked_. Sharp metal and the bite of bullets did absolutely nothing to deter a fiend - they would just keep coming until one party or the other was dead. They didn't conform to normal animal behavior, showed no sign of predator _or_ prey algorithms - they didn't stalk, they weren't made skittish by fire, water or the weather, and while they generally avoided masses of human civilization, were not disturbed by machinery or noise. They were simply chaos. They _didn't fear_.

And yet, they were backing away - not just from Auron, but from Tidus as well.

Taking advantage of whatever weirdness had suddenly overtaken the world, Tidus rushed up to stand next to Auron. "What is this?" he asked, glancing at the older man's face.

Auron's mouth was a tight line showing in the shadows just above his collar, partway between frown and grimace. "I'm not sure," he finally conceded, looking uncomfortable to be admitting such. "But I wouldn't put any faith in it staying. Keep on your guard, and press forward. We need to take that sinspawn out."

Auron's words from earlier rang in his ears, and Tidus frowned. "Sinspawn?"

[X]

If Auron were the type to allow his frustrations to show, he would be sighing.

Somehow, he figured, it was Jecht's fault. It was always Jecht's fault, and he'd always had a bad habit of dragging Auron - and now his son, as well - into the messes he created.

However, if he was being truthful, this particular snag he had just hit in the plan was his own fault. Surrounded on all side by sinscales, regardless of how strangely skittish they were behaving towards Auron and his younger charge (maybe enough of Jecht still remained within Sin's shell to subconsciously hold his spawn back until they had arrived in Spira?), it felt almost as if the once guardian, twice-over failure, was already back home, in Spira. The screams, the crash of rubble and screech of metal tearing apart under the weight of sinspawn and Sin's very presence, the sense of foreboding that rushed through the bloodstream like a dark adrenalin high - to Auron, no matter how horrible or depressing it may seem, it was home in the way Zanarkand, a peaceful land of one-thousand years ago, had never, could and would never be.

Thinking on his own latent blood knight tendencies, on how the past decade spent in Zanarkand had made him long for just a small piece of the action he'd once faced daily with Jecht and Braska by his side, was something he definitely did not want to think on now, not when the plan depended on getting past these obstacles as fast as possible, not when it was _Tidus_ beside him, a boy not yet out of his teens and with no experience in fighting whatsoever.

Auron jerked his head at the masses of sinscales which swarmed around the base of the sinspawn but made no move to come any closer to them. "They come from Sin," he answered Tidus' query, and was very aware of the way the boy tensed, eyes tracking the sphere that held Sin on the skyline of Zanarkand. "We need to take it down," Auron cautioned, "and then move on, fast."

Tidus blinked. "Why?"

Auron did his best to repress a grin. "We're _expected_."


	2. Second Chapter

"Expected? Auron, wha-"

The last half of Tidus' question was cut off as Auron lunged forwards towards the sinspawn suddenly, though he could guess at what the boy meant. Unfortunately, he had no time to listen or respond - the air around the tendrils of the sinspawn was wavering in shades of smoke-black and midnight-blue, small motes of silvery light dancing among the undulating waves.

Auron knew spellcasting when he saw it, even after a decade in a land with no magic, and it was with a bizarre mix of relief and nausea that he recognized the effects of demi being forced down onto him - no, onto the whole area around the spawn - the gravity based spell forcing his body to contort and placing pressure on his lungs and mind; demi was rarely ever fatal, however, more of a nuisance then anything, especially to a veteran fighter.

Tidus, though, was gasping in shock as the spell slammed into him, choking on his own breath as he panicked.

Auron closed his eyes for a moment. Jecht. _It was all Jecht's fault_.

Finally, after what was truly only a few seconds, not even a full half minute, but which felt longer due to being forced to listen to the boy he'd watched grow from a child panic in terror - (honestly, Tidus had kept things together tonight far better than Auron had ever expected of him. He felt bizarrely proud of the boy) and he couldn't even shout a reassurance or some advice of some kind - demi had, quite literally, knocked the breath right out of him. The only reason Tidus was still making noise was because he had a, quite frankly, inhuman lung capacity due to blitz. Even as a child, it had been abnormally large, and if it wasn't for the fact that he was an Unsent and therefore already dead, Auron would have suffered many a heart attack throughout his years of watching Jecht's son go underwater and then not surface for anywhere from five minutes up to half an hour – the spell finally let up, either the spawn had run out of mana or was no longer supplying demi with a constant stream of it.

Auron gritted his teeth as he forced his aching body into a standing position with the discipline that came from years of fighting for his life and the lives of others – a discipline that had not dulled even a single bit since coming to Zanarkand and spending the past decade of his life in a perpetual peacetime, in fact, what with the constant eye he had kept on Tidus throughout his formative years (the boy had his father's ridiculous habit of finding trouble in the absolute _stupidest_ of places, _what else was he meant to do_ ) his instincts for danger, once keyed only to fiends and their ilk, had now sharpened, registering everything and anything as what it _could be_ rather than what it in any given moment _was_ – a threat.

Next to him, Tidus was also rising to his feet, stumbling and gasping into a somewhat shaky upright position, but still clinging onto his sword for dear life with both hands.

 _Good_ , Auron thought, as he sent a swift sideways glance the boy's way, filled with approval and more than a little pride – those instincts would serve him well once they arrived in Spira, and he _would_ need them.

"Ready?" Auron asked him, swinging his own blade, Beastmaster, into a ready and slanted position that would make both defense and offense feasible. It was far from being the best blade available to him – at least, in regards to Spiran weaponry, he was pretty sure no-one in Zanarkand was even moderately competent in making the kind of blade that would be needed to slice through sinspawn – nor was it the blade that he had carried with him that long trip with Jecht and Braska that was Braska's pilgrimage. It was simply a cheap blade, little more than a solid and sharp slab of metal, that he had picked up in Spira with what little gil he had remaining from the pilgrimage before being dropped into this Zanarkand of the past by Jecht. It was a piece of _home_.

"I – yeah." Tidus' voice was almost so quiet that Auron couldn't hear it, and as shaky as his grip on his blade – the Taming Sword, a blade with no name that Jecht had bought on the pilgrimage over a decade ago, seemingly on a whim, later revealing to Auron and Braska that if he ever made it home, he was going to give it to his son.

At that point in the pilgrimage, neither Auron nor Braska had known much about Jecht's son except that he existed. Jecht hadn't given a name, or a description, just mentioned that he and Yuna, Braska's young daughter, were the same age. The two men native to Spira hadn't pushed for information – after all, it was none of their business, and they didn't want to bring up what could be painful memories for the third man – but before the disaster that Auron would forevermore refer to as the 'Shoopuff Incident,' when Jecht put down the drink and got permanently serious (well, as serious as Jecht ever got), the alcohol he swallowed down like pure water blurred his mind and loosened his tongue, he would wax poetic about his wife, and mumble slurred worries about his son.

If there was one thing that Auron had learnt from these nights it was that Jecht had been, to put it lightly, a terrible father. Maybe not physically abusive, but absent more often than not and confrontational or right out aggressive when he was. But things change and people change with them. The Jecht that had arrived in Spira was abrasive, crude, and quite literally unbearable. The Jecht that had bought that sword, thinking of teaching its ways to his son like he had once upon a time taught him the basics of blitz was not that same man, and neither was the one that had sacrificed it all for Spira's sake.

' _Are you sure he's going to want that sword?' Braska asked, amused. 'Surely it's almost the same size that he is.'_

' _Ah,' Jecht grunted. 'He'll grow into it.'_

' _It's not a robe, Jecht,' Auron had warned. 'It's a blade.'_

' _Yeah,' the other man had replied. 'But no matter how bad of a dad I was, I_ know _my son, believe it or not. And I know he'll grow into it, so drop it.'_

 _Braska, ever the peacekeeper, and still unfairly amused by the image of Jecht lugging two oversized swords around, spoke up. 'And what will you name it?'_

 _Pensively, Jecht raised the sword so the sharp edge ran parallel to the center of his face, and cast his gaze over it. 'I won't,' he decided. 'When Tidus has earned it, he can name it.'_

 _There was a pause, briefly, as Auron and Braska gazed at one another and wondered if Jecht had meant to reveal his son's name or had unintentionally slipped up._

 _Finally, 'Tidus?' Auron snorted. 'Like the sea? Should have known your obsession with water would land your kid with an unfortunate name.'_

 _Jecht had barked out a laugh. 'You'd think, but no,' he said. 'My wife named the kid. Apparently, it means "sun."'_

' _Hmm,' Braska had tilted his head back to take in the vast, starry sky above them, eyes resting on the waning crescent moon that hung among those silvery, shining stars. 'My wife named our child, too,' he said. 'Yuna – it means "moon."'_

' _Well, what do you know,' Jecht cracked a grin. 'They match.'_

Staring at Tidus now, the teen that had grown from a little boy lost who had _hated_ his father (and originally Auron, for knowing the man), Auron wondered just _how_ Jecht had known about how well that sword would meld into Tidus' grip – Jecht, for all his strength in combat, lacked the finesse needed for true mastery of the sword. Much like Tidus had against those sinscales, he had wielded the large blade he had chosen as his own akin to a bludgeoning weapon rather than a blade, and since it had served him well, he had never bothered to learn any other skills in the way of his weapon, preferring to study black magic (specifically, fire class) to back up what brute force couldn't accomplish.

And yet, somehow, knowing little to nothing of the sword, or how his own son would end up growing, Jecht had managed to pick a blade that Tidus could hold and swing with relative ease – and unlike his father, who really _was_ 'blunt force trauma inflicted on the unsuspecting and unwilling' – he was learning through example, _Auron's_ example, watching as his mentor-cum-father-figure swung his blade and adjusted slightly to mirror it. In just these short number of minutes since Zanarkand's fall had begun, Tidus had already picked up on some of the basics of wielding a sword.

"Well," Auron responded to Tidus' shaky affirmation in a gruff voice, "If you're ready, then let's go."

Surging forward with a yell, a great release of breath, Auron raised his sword, and prepared to unleash his Overdrive.

His Overdrive – called Bushido, dealt a great deal of physical damage to all enemies within his line of sight, spreading out in a fan shape with him standing at the epicenter. Finding his center and summoning all the strength he could spare into it, he felt it build up within him until it reached its peak, a boiling point, and burst out in the form of Dragon Fang.

[X]

Tidus' world was already weird – had gone way past that, actually, falling into _entirely too strange_ territory, but still, he wasn't prepared for Auron to go superhuman on the strange, glow-winged spider like fiends that had spread out in front of them, surrounding the larger fiend – sinspawn, Auron had called it – like an honour guard.

He stood, frozen and open mouthed, as Auron swung his sword horizontally over his back, resting lightly against his shoulder as if in preparation to swing it down at any time, while reaching out with his free hand, palm spread open and towards the enemies.

In that moment, the air surrounding Auron seemed to _warp_ , and Tidus could feel the air grow _heavy_ , as impossible and physic defying as it was – the air gained weight coinciding with the pure _heat_ that swelled up around Auron like a mirage, the entire world watching from a precipice.

And then, the moment broke, and quick as lightning, Auron was swinging his sword and thrusting it _down_ as he jumped _up_ , his momentum breaking through the already cracked tarmac that made up the surface of the bridge they were on.

As Auron's sword pierced the ground they stood on, the heat that had permeated the atmosphere _shuddered_ to Tidus' senses and rushed towards Auron, seeming to flood his blade and the earth it still was stabbed through. A high pitched, squealing whining, like overheated glass about to shatter, filled the air – and a bright, white hot orange spread out from around Auron's sword, spreading out with a piercing roar towards the smaller fiends as Tidus watched, wide-eyed.

"What," he said flatly, his mind too broken to even summon surprise or shock to his voice. " _What."_

"Tidus!" Auron panted, rising unsteadily to his feet and leaning heavily on his sword. "Later! _Focus._ " Whereas those first two words had been shouted breathlessly as Auron was caught somewhere between exhaustion and panic seeing Tidus just _standing there_ , wide open to any sinscale left lurking around that might decide to take a shot with its spines, the last – _focus_ – had been a cool, rational order, given in an absolute tone that left no room for disobedience.

Seeing, knowing, and acknowledging this, Tidus had no other choice – he had to simply trust Auron, as he had always done, and do as he was bid. And so, he rushed forward, pulling his blade back before throwing it forward with all his weight as he ran at the sinspawn that resembled a tentacled tree-trunk more than anything, slicing through it at the bottom – not cutting it all the way through but tearing quite a chunk of flesh off of it along with rows of scales, before using his legs to push off of it and dislodge his blade as he felt it shudder and tremble beneath him, that movement echoed through the bridge it had lodged itself in.

Landing slightly in front of where he had been standing with Auron, Tidus allowed his momentum to skid him backwards into a position where he could better see Auron to follow his lead, scraping his sword along the ground like a manual break.

Auron still seemed to be slightly winded by whatever it was he had done before, but had recovered enough to regain his wits. He was frowning slightly, grimacing at the injured sinspawn, who tendrils were flickering wildly in the air, dancing and spelling out a silent scream of anguish that Tidus could somehow read, feel, _hear_ , as it tore not at his eardrums but down his spine through the stem of his brain.

An uncontrollable shiver an through Tidus' body, but Auron did not appear to notice and Tidus knew this was far from the right time to be bringing extra problems up – even if that problem was that he thought he could understand the body language of a fiend that was hitherto unknown to Tidus, or probably _anyone_ in Zanarkand.

"Brace yourself," Auron's voice was a low, grim warning. "It comes."

And then, with a static sound that was terribly, hauntingly familiar to Tidus even though he had only heard once in his life, a low, buzzing keen that filled him with dread and set every nerve on edge, the world swam with violet-black light and a force he couldn't see but was nevertheless as inescapable as gravity slammed into him as hard and fast and sure as concrete; his body buckled under the invisible weight.

His lungs _burned_. His ribs _screamed_. And his mind – his mind was filled with ceaseless, panicked babble, a stream of incomplete sentences and blaring alarms as it took in the fact that he couldn't move, could barely breathe.

Tidus sucked in one singular, shaky breath through gritted teeth with difficulty, and even though the beating, pounding rhythm of his own heartbeat, the tempo of his raised pulse was echoing through his entire body like a mournful blood-song, attempted to calm himself down. This had happened before, after all, not even five minutes earlier – and that, too, had been temporary.

He could do this. _He could do this._

[X]

 _Some can't wait to die_.

The thought, surprisingly vicious though it was, struck Auron as the second demi hit like an avalanche, the wound Tidus had given the sinspawn lending it extra strength.

However strong the spell had been initially, however, it waned even faster than the first, already letting up, loosening the tight grip gravity held like a vice around his core and allowing him to breathe again. Next to and slightly behind Auron, Tidus' body had been forced down into a contorted and painful looking crouch. Sweat poured down the boy's face and his eyes were clenched tight.

A cold anger Auron hadn't felt in years filled every cell of his body. This was, in a way, his own fault – he was rusty, out of shape. Even with all the 'training trips' he had done in the wildlands surrounding Zanarkand and the mountain range over the years since his arrival in Jecht's time, he had never once been pushed to the point where unleashing an Overdrive was necessary, in fact it would have been the overkill to slaughter all other overkills.

( _'There's no kill like overkill,' Jecht laughed in the back of his mind._ )

Fiends in Zanarkand, lacking the pyreflies that gave the Spiran fiends those extra bouts of strength, of sadism and viciousness, were simply so weak that even en masse they could be brought down with one hit, not even at full strength – and the fiends in Zanarkand couldn't cast, either, same as the citizens. Auron had wondered, many times over the years, just what had changed in the millennium that separated Zanarkand from Spira to bring magic to the humes, to bring forth the Ronso and the Guado, whom he had seen neither hide nor hair of since his arrival, same as the almost jarring lack of Al Bhed in what was, to his mind, a machina city.

But now wasn't the time for such thoughts – not when even more, the effect of demi was lessening as the spell waned, freeing him up enough to lever himself into a more battle ready crouching position, his grip on the hilt of his sword tightening once again, the leather of his gloves creaking against the leather wrap of it.

Quickly, before the spell's effects completely cancelled and they could move once again, Auron dug deep inside himself, sending out a questioning echo of power.

Almost complete emptiness answered him, and Auron was caught between shock and rage as he realised that only Dragon Fang remained available to him as he currently was, the other techniques that he had spent years cultivating, perfecting, locked behind an impenetrable barrier that he literally couldn't breach, not with both his mana and strength as they were now.

Then, demi let up, and he was gone, already gone, leaving anger and shock behind him as he ran forwards like a shock of steel bearing lightning, mind shifting once more back into the cold and ready mindset he needed to keep in the heat of battle, especially with an inexperienced teenager as the one fighting by his side.

As his blade stabbed fiercely into the side of the sinspawn, Auron grinned.

[X]

The ten minutes after that second vertigo inducing _something_ were, to be completely honest, a literal _blur_ to Tidus. After that second, torturously long period of _no movement_ and _no breath_ , there was slashing and hacking and stabbing and repeated periods of _no movement, no breath_ , though they _were_ mercifully shorter – but Tidus couldn't recall much of that, not over the death screams of the sinspawn as it withered like the tree he had thought it akin to.

Audibly, there was a whooshing sound, like the tinkling of ethereal bells as the sinspawn broke down, melting from its physical form into something that Auron called 'pyreflies' with a sardonic tone and unreadable expression.

But inaudibly, except to apparently Tidus, there was a sound like the whale songs you could hear when the pods swam past Zanarkand on their migratory routes, only it wasn't the same beautiful and soothing sound. The sinspawn's swan song was beautiful, yes, all water and lights, just the same as Zanarkand – but it was beautiful in the way a storm was, terrible and delicate all at once. It roared through him like the great crest of a wave as it came crashing down, and his entire body screamed in agony along with the dying sinspawn. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, welling over and spilling down his cheeks – and as much as he wanted to think it was from the pain he had just experienced, of which after echoes still trembled through his body like the remnants of a high magnitude earthquake, there was a new wounded part of him that shivered in the darkness deep inside his soul, that made him uncertain of where the tears came from, and what, exactly, they were for.

Of course, once it was dead, Auron ,who had regained his breath and was now riding his second wind, was all _move, move, move_ , and they were rushing down the bridge once again when they came against a problem. A large one.

The smaller, winged-spider like fiends had apparently taken exception to their defeat of the larger one, the sinspawn.

 _Of course,_ Tidus thought numbly as he sank into a low stance that seemed natural, pulling parts of it from years of observing Auron practice in the mornings on the deck of the boat, and readying his blade for the nth time in the past, what was it, hour? – if that – that evening, _Because we just could not catch a break._

 _Don't cry._

A voice, not his own, suddenly spoke from within his mind, like a more gentle echo of the sinspawn's last 'gift' to him. It was raspy, young, and androgynous – but at the same time, overlaid with age and wisdom and a terrible strength.

It occurred to Tidus in that moment that he was, quite possibly, losing it. Stress induced auditory hallucinations. After all, even though they said that talking to yourself was the first sign of madness, Tidus had always prided himself on being contrary.

 _You're not going crazy_. The voice laughed in his mind, and boy, wasn't that reassuring. _Just remember, you have no reason to cry, okay?_

And then the voice, and the weight presence it brought with it that Tidus hadn't even noticed was gone, and he realised that that presence had been with him the entire evening, since he had entered the blitz sphere.

Tidus swallowed while keeping his eyes forwards, waiting for Auron to make a move, to signal him something.

Why him?

[X]

Auron had done a lot of stupid things in his life, most of them involving, in some way, Jecht.

Much like this one was.

Tidus, who had long ago mastered the art of looking at Auron in a way that perfectly captured _are you crazy, you absolute dumbass_ was sending him that look now between wide –eyed glances of fearful _no, seriously, what_.

"What?" Tidus finally said what his face was screaming out loud. "You want me to _what_?"

"Just cut it down!" Auron bellowed back, a combination of adrenalin and fatigue pushing his fraying nerves and emotions to the bitter edge. "And trust me! You'll see."

A faint expression of guilt flashed across Tidus' face at the insinuation that he didn't trust Auron, but nonetheless her lunged straight for the overturned fuel tanker rather than wasting precious time with words as he tried to explain or apologise, which Auron was thankful for.

They, neither of them, could hold out much longer against the veritable onslaught that Jecht had unleashed upon them. Even knowing as he did that the corruption of Yu Yevon had infiltrated and twisted his friend beyond any recognition or higher reasoning beyond base instinct and the pre-programmed mandate of sin, Auron couldn't help but feel exasperated at the fact that _of course_ Jecht couldn't just give them a break. It just wasn't 'his style.'

It was then, with a faint _shlink_ followed by the kind of hollow rumble that predated large explosions – thank Jecht for _that_ knowledge, the pyromaniac – that Tidus, who had been hacking away at the linking mechanism of the tanker to the chassis as Auron guarded his back, succeeded in removing one from the other.

"Go." Auron nodded to Tidus, the sinscales having either scattered or perished, the only danger now the burning bridge that was quickly crumbling beneath them.

With grace afforded to him by years of blitzball, Tidus did exactly that. But fighting with a sword and adjusting your center of gravity to that particular task and leaping through the air from stone to stone as your footholds vanished as soon as you left them, sometimes even before – well. That was another entirely different story.

Auron felt a panic he didn't entirely want to admit to as he saw the way the second large explosion threw Tidus off his feet, pushing him through the air so that he hung by his hands from the raw edges of what remained of the bridge.

He was about to move forward – to reach for Tidus, maybe to call for him to lever himself back onto the platform – when he became aware of it.

Sin, encapsulated within an amorphous, undulating sphere of water, loomed behind them like a harbinger bringing with it the end of a decade's worth of halcyon days.

So. It was time, then.

Stepping forward, moving until he'd reached the place where Tidus had fallen, Auron glanced down.

"Auron!" Tidus called out his name, panicked, but believing completely that Auron would pull him up.

Sin and the water blurred, shifting together to from…something else, something horribly familiar to Auron, and yearning of a bittersweet sort filled his heart even as he grieved for those who had fallen today. Zanarkand, after all, had been destined to die by Sin's hand at one point, anyway – but these were innocent people, same as those who lived in Spira, and the desire to save one group had led to the destruction of the other.

Jecht. Braska. It was, all of it, for them.

The platform Auron stood on and Tidus hung off, a broken piece of bridge that had stayed remarkably intact, lifted as Sin's presence, its power, worked as something of a reverse demi, sucking them and all else in.

The abject fear and confusion on Tidus' face was hard to see, and so he turned his attention towards the monstrous form of his friend, and spoke a single sentence, even though he knew Jecht could not respond, even if he still remained within Sin's consciousness in some conscious form.

"You are sure?" He spoke gently, quietly, like one might speak to a small child or someone on their death bed – which was, essentially, Jecht's exact situation. By doing this, he was signing his own death certificate.

It was then, knowing that he had hesitated enough, hearing the pained and effort filled grunts of Tidus as he attempted to claw himself back onto the platform that Auron acted.

Auron tilted his head so that his collar would hide the tight line of his mouth, and crouched swiftly, hooking a fisted hand in Tidus' collar and lifting the boy up.

"This is it," he spoke stoically, as Tidus locked a confused gaze onto his, expression edging into betrayal. "This is your story." The wind picked up, whipping both his coat and the edges of Tidus' clothes wildly, as gravity seemingly gave up once and for all and relinquished its final grip on the world.

"It all begins here."


	3. INTERVAL

Tidus's life is lived in increments, chapters, stories, that are seperate from eachother. His first life was the comparatively halcyon days of his childhood ages birth to seven. After that chapter closes, when he is reborn into his next existence, the next stage of his evolution is from ages seven to ten, and they are recognised by two things within his mind - _Jecht_ (rather than dad), and _Auron_.

The next stage is his current one - the one that sort of started when he was seven, to be completely truthful, when he first met Auron.

He was then fourteen, now seventeen, and he isn't entirely sure - but he thinks that, maybe, just maybe, this chapter in his life could be labelled _Recovery_.

Tidus likes labels, likes lists. Things he can remember and recite and _control_ , a mantra for him to focus on when the shit hits the fan. He knows, intelectually, that this is not the healthiest way to deal with his problems. But thats exactly what he does - _deals_. Sometimes Auron is there, but more often _not_ these days, now that he is older and can take care of himself for the most part.

Auron is family, in the most round-about, convoluted way possible, and Tidus has long since come to terms with the fact that he will never fully understand the man who is responsible for raising him throughout the latter years of his childhood. He knows, however, that even if he isn't always _present_ , Auron will always be _there_ for him. It's nice, knowing that he isn't alone in the world, knowing that he isn't simply by himself waiting for either the ghosts of his mother and father that remain haunting his memories to come after him.

Auron, though - he made it hard for Tidus to deal with things in the way he normally did when he was younger. Now, Tidus is loud where Auron is quiet ( _stay quiet, please silent, just like a little rabbit, please, Tidus. Please, for mama?_ ), dark where Tidus is colourful ( _black and red are practically the family colours, kid._ ), and just all too with it when Tidus _isn't_.

Tidus knows he shouldn't be close with a this man. He is one who is _Jecht's friend_ , an _adult_ , and one day Auron will leave, too.

But he can't stay away - distant or not, its nice having someone else, even if that someone is a wayward swordsman who has just as many issues as him if not more, and its not like Auron would just accept Tidus telling him to go away - would in fact laugh at him, most likely, and ruffle his hair. If Tidus tried to tell him he didn't want him to be a part of his life anymore, Auron would doggedly, stoically refuse and simply loiter about his houseboat life a silent, looming shadow until he gave in. The idiot was a stubborn bastard like that.

And if he just disappeared, vanished off into the shadows like he was sometimes tempted to do, like his asshole of a dad had, Auron would search for him, and drag him home via a fist in his hair. The stubborn bastard was an idiot like that.

He is Tidus, son of Jecht and Mira (though sometimes he wishes otherwise), he is seventeen, an up-and-coming blitz player on one of the better teams in the league, and though he has _issues_ , he is better than he has been since - since _that day_. He has people he cares about, few as they are, and people who care about him. Sleeping is no longer the perpetual torture it used to be, filled with images of darkwater and a terrible, aching loneliness - though nightmares are still more frequent than is probably healthy. He still has troubles eating, sometimes, which he knows troubles Auron - but he _does_ eat enough to live, even though the scent of cooking meat can make him gag and choke and _remember_.

He is seventeen, and he is a few years into _Recovery_. Things are looking up.

And then he is seventeen, still, again, and everything changes.

He thinks with a sinking feeling as the next chapter of his cursed life starts, that the best word, title, label to apply to this current period of his life, is _Spiral_.


	4. Third Chapter

It was cold.

Upon awakening, that was the first thought Tidus had. Not, _it's wet_ , or _my head hurts_ \- both these things were common in blitz games after all, and according to his memory, that was the last thing he'd been doing. He'd honestly think he'd been hit by a particularly vicious curveball and blacked out momentarily, if it wasn't for one thing - the cold.

It was _cold_. And even in the summer, a blitzsphere was always heated.

The state between sleep and wake, or rather consciousness and unconsciousness, was always a hazily gray one for Tidus, who had taken more injuries to the head than anywhere else in his career (professionally only around two years long, but realistically his whole life). Auron had always checked over him in these cases with a seriousness that grew and shrank in accordance with the severity of the injury, and more often than not had ended with a _hmph_ as Auron declared he should be glad they had aimed for his head, thick as it was, rather than any other part of his body that may be more delicate.

This head injury felt different, not as external as the others. Oh, sure, his head ached something fierce, the pounding of his blood in his skull a drumbeat of _ow_ , but mostly he was just fuzzy, and tempted to sink back under the lulling waves of black that hovered at the edges of his mind, like he was sinking into the cold, frigid waters of the sea.

His eyes snapped open. The sea. Where was he?

Salt on his tongue, and waves rocking gently as far as the eye could see, so this was definitely an ocean - but where? All the water surrounding Zanarkand were warmer than this, and if he was far out enough not to see Zanarkand, then he'd been unconscious longer than he'd thought -

...Why was he unconscious, again?

It didn't matter, honestly. Not right now, at least. The Zanarkand Abes, like most high ranking league professionals, frequently took training sessions into the ocean. Pools were for endurance and stamina building, spheres were for mock games, but the ocean was where the true training happened. Unique skills, signature moves (like the Jecht Shot, which he still hadn't perfect) - they were only allowed to be practiced in the ocean (blitzballs were, after all, actually considered lethal weapons under the Zanarkand Arms Act (sub-section 3-b)) as no one running a pool wanted their pristine buildings to be wrecked by a kick gone horribly wrong. The point was, Tidus had trained in the ocean. Knew the ocean, knew its rules.

He had no idea how long he'd been out here, but he could still feel the cold, sense that the water was freezing. That was good - it hadn't fully lowered his core temperature, yet, but that could soon change. He needed to get out of this water _now_ , before hypothermia set in.

Auron was probably laughing at him right now, Tidus thought. The older man had accused him of wanting to run away to live with the mermaids in the sea when he was younger, he was jumping into it so often and spending so much time down below. He let out a humourless chuckle, more of a rasping breath than anything as his stiff (cold) lips pulled back from chattering teeth. You could kill a man with water in a multitude of ways - drowning being the most common - but Tidus could honestly say he'd never really considered _cold_ to be one of them. Zanarkand, after all, was practically a tropical climate, even with the mountain ranges surrounding it - never really dropping below an average of the low twenties in temperature, even in the middle of winter.

He'd been treading water for a while, now, trying to keep limbs moving and blood flow regular, and as he began to move somewhat aimlessly in a random direction, keeping his head above water and squinting through the thick fog that roiled like a second ocean above the one he was submerged in, sacrificing speed, grace and the conservation of energy for the sake of somewhat heightened visibility, low as it still was.

There was chunks of stone around him, he realised. Mostly small, insignificant pieces of rubble bobbing along, soon to sink, but as he continued onwards, the water growing warmer (though not by much) and murkier, dark blue switching to steel grey, they grew larger, not so much chunks of stone as chunks of buildings, _ruins_ , the majority old and carved with unfamiliar sigils - but others, clearly newer, very familiar.

Tidus swallowed as on his way to a larger, more stable looking broken platform of a half-submerged ruin, ragged chunks along the edge where walls may have once been, a wooden sign bobbed past, colourful red and yellow - a fast food joint in Zanarkand. He'd never eaten there, himself, but he'd heard they'd had good food, and he knew that one of the little league teams - from C-South, maybe, the same region the Duggles were from - had managed to land them as sponsors not even a year earlier. And now, the sign of that same brand, that had probably stood proud above the entrances to ones of their restaurants, was floating in splintered pieces. What had _happened_?

Reaching the platform, Tidus heaved himself upwards, trying to be aware as he possibly could of anything sharp or dangerous that could be waiting for him to impale himself on; a difficult task when his limbs were as numb as they were.

Hoisting his body, finally, onto the platform proper and gasping in shock that wasn't all that shocking but more instinctual as the cold air bit at his wet (and therefore vulnerable) skin, eagerly worming through layers of soaked cloth to kiss viciously at the bare flesh underneath, like a bite of cold steel in the summer, though nowhere near as benign.

Standing up, intending to use the higher and more solid ground the platform offered to see if there was shelter, civilization, or any form of land nearby, Tidus felt his mind blank out as he realised he must have been even number than he'd originally thought.

There was a _goddamn sword_ strapped to his leg, the hilt and the wicked hook-curve of the blade tangled in the leather straps of his pants. And, yes, the _goddamn_ part of _goddamn sword_ was necessary, because this wasn't a sword like the martial arts masters used in traditional demonstrations at the heart of the city, or the thin and delicate swords used in fencing that seemed more like inflexible whips to Tidus - no, this was an _Auron_ sword. It was huge, unwieldy, illogical and almost physic defying, and also, most likely, _completely lethal_. That sharp edge was _not_ for show, Tidus believed, and was also amazed that he had somehow managed to _not_ cut his leg open while kicking around in the water with that attached to him (and how had he not felt it attached to him?).

So. Now he was not only standing on (somewhat) dry land, he had a weapon. Even if said weapon was more a slab of ridiculously sharp metal than anything else and probably only differed from Tidus' total weight by a few kilograms, if that. For all he knew, it weighed more, and who knew what the salt water of the surrounding ocean would do to the blade. Pure metals would rust, wouldn't they? And if it was an alloy...well, Tidus wasn't sure what either of those would mean, actually, admittedly not having paid much attention in chemistry when he _did_ go to school, and not having any way to identify what the sword was made of, anyway.

What Tidus did know, was water, and as he gazed out into the fog from a higher position, eyes picking up vaguely defined shapes above the waves, he thought on the way the water had changed the further he had swum, and realised – he was close to a mass of land.

A particularly chill wind gusted through as he stood, considering, and he nodded grimly to himself as he acknowledged the fact that staying on the platform was, essentially, useless. If he could get to that land, there was the chance of food, shelter, people.

Just…he sent a cautious glance at the water.

What were the odds of fiends being around?

-x-

Auron sighed as he shook his numb legs out, feeling the cold water soaked into and weighing down the cloth sluice down his body.

Goddamn, but he hated water, especially since becoming an unsent. He didn't truly feel cold or heat, anymore – but that was mostly because his internal temperature didn't change. The innate cold of _himself_ taken with the frigidness of the water meant that as he had come to in Spira's sea, he had flashed a brief moment of absolute panic as he swam for some sort of solid, dry land – it wouldn't do for the cold of the water to infect his limbs, freezing him stiff.

Also, he hated Jecht. With a _burning passion_ hot enough to _unfreeze_ his stiff body.

 _Where the hell was Tidus_.

"You were meant to drop the kid and me off _together_ , Jecht," he sighed, running a still clammy hand down his face. "He'll be dead within the hour," Auron despaired, now talking more to himself than his wayward friend, once again lost – to the sea? To Sin's nature? Had that brief moment of Jecht regaining some semblance of control over the corrupted parasite led to the destruction of an innocent Spiran town, Auron wondered?

Allowing himself one more sigh, Auron took in the sight before him, the once grand Baaj temple, and braced himself to head in, hand resting readily on the hilt of his sword.

-x-

" _Why did you interfere? By doing this, the dream could die."_

" _This is still salvageable. We cannot allow the dream to be influenced by the unsent and our fallen brother. If we are to follow through with this, he must remain uncorrupted by their views while in Spira."_

" _For all your age, you're still nothing but a_ foolish _child-"_

" _Please, brother, sister. Be at peace with one another. What's done is done. Now, we must work together to fix this."_

" _Tch. The lot of you have all forgotten, haven't you? What it means to be human? Our fallen brother, and the unsent – they are_ parents. _They will not let go of their child so easily as you think."_

" _Peace, Anima. Do not interfere."_


	5. Fourth Chapter

Hi! No formatting in this chapter for this website - for italics and stuff, head to AO3. The version over there also comes with a very handy link to an Al-Bhed translator. That is all, thank you for your patience.

* * *

"Fa yna ybbnuylrehk Baaj," A voice called out from behind her, and she turned from where she stood, resting her arms on the railing of the ship's outer deck. "Yna oui nayto?" The crew member continued.

"Oac!" She responded, waving an arm to show she understood, before turning back to her rail and gazing out into the distance

Across the water, just appearing now, over the horizon line, was Baaj – once a holy land and great temple, now ruined by the passage of time and Sin, its Aeon – if it had ever had one (Baaj's records had been lost generations earlier) - long gone.

Though that was a good thing, she supposed. There would be no Summoners about for them to rescue. This trip could be all about the salvage, before they had to head to Luca for the Blitz tournament. She wouldn't be playing – but she'd be cheering the Psyches on, and besides – everyone would flock to Luca, including the Summoners.

She shook her head.

Bad Rikku, she thought. Don't think about Summoners right now. Just focus on the salvage. The machina! Gaab vulicat, funno mydan.

She'd been to Baaj before – with all the rubble that the tides pushed to it, and just how deep and vast the waters around it were, there was pretty much always something new to discover on a salvage trip, even if only scrap or parts to be repurposed, rather than new machina. But on all those other trips, taken with either Brother or her father, she had never been allowed off ship, into the water. The fiends around this area weren't incredibly tough, but with the lack of people here to kill them, or acolytes of Yevon to deal with the pyreflies, they were many, and underwater fiends could be particularly hard to deal with.

This trip, not only was she helping salvage and fight, she was running it. She'd proven herself earlier that year, activating a machina no-one else had been able to, and with that plus her most recent birthday making her technically an adult, Cid – her father – had decided she was ready to strike out 'on her own,' so to speak. The Al-Bhed, after all, were technically a democracy, a meritocracy – but she was Cid's daughter. Even if she never ended up running things, she would always, in some way, be important.

And as leader of this team - even if not on the ship, where authority fell to the captain and members of his crew - she was responsible for both what they would find, and for making sure that all the men following her into Baaj would follow her back out of it again, in one piece, preferably. Which meant that they were going in cautiously, scoping out the ruins and rubble from a distance before going in without the ship - no need to risk their only means of transport out of an area long abandoned by taking it into the parts of the sea surrounding Baaj that were deadly sharp underneath, perfect for ripping into a hull.

"Fa ryja haynmo syta y vimm banesadan," one of the crew members - Linoc, maybe - joined her by the railing, crossing his arms. "Yho byndelimyn bmyla oui fyhd du drnuf tufh yhlrun?"

Giving him a grin and a nudge with her elbow, Rikku quickly glanced out over the horizon, and shook her head as even squinting only brought out vague shapes on the water. "Lenlma ynuiht uhla suna," she said. "Kad ic eh lmucan. Yht - dryhg oui."

Linoc - yes, she was pretty sure that's who it was, the the goggle and face coverings worn by everyone on ship didn't help so much with the whole recognising thing - returned her grin and nodded, turning to head into the bridge, where the captain was likely waiting for her call.

If Rikku was being honest with herself, she really, really wanted to go to the temple. People just didn't go to Baaj anymore, if they ever even had. Beyond Summoners and their Guardians on pilgrimages, only really devoted Yevonites travelled to the temples, or travelled at all, really. Leaving for some place far away was dangerous. There was Sin and fiends to worry about, and even the weather in some places. Baaj had to have been lying, empty and abandoned, for years. Even the Al-Bhed on their salvage trips didn't enter the territory of the temple proper - they may not follow the teachings of Yevon, but some things were sacred (no pun intended) even to them. She was absolutely certain that some kind of amazing loot was waiting to be discovered there - maybe even a solution to their Summoner problem, and by extension, Sin.

...Yes, it was a stretch, a big one, but Rikku was nothing if not an optimist, and either way, or heart called out for adventure.

-x-

Tidus wasn't cold anymore, and he prayed fervently to whomever was listening - whichever god, deity or spirit watched over idiots that played sports that could kill them for fun, most likely - that it was because he was now mostly dry, only slightly damp in the creases of his clothes, and not because hypothermia had set in. That would suck, and also be very bad.

No, his biggest problem right now aside from the fact that he was in this bizarre situation in the first place, surrounded by open water and sinking rubble on all sides, was the water istelf.

Sea water. Salt water.

Damn, but he was thirsty. He honestly couldn't remember a single time in his life in which fresh water wasn't readily available for him to drink, even if it was slightly warm from the tap, and it was a feeling he never wanted to know again. His lips had dried out, helped in the process by the salt of the water he was presuming he had spent at least an hour in by now, cracked and sore to move. They hadn't bled yet, though, and Tidus was hoping he'd find some sort of land, and fresh water source (if not civilisation, please civilisation) before that became a real issue.

He wondered, briefly and without really wanting to, what it had been like for his dad. After all - he had to have gone a similar way, right? He'd washed out to sea, said he was going for practice, and then never come home. They'd never found a body in the waters surrounding Zanarkand, so it was just presumed he had gotten caught in a rip or strong tide, and the ocean had taken him.

Except, no, that couldn't be right. Tidus tilted his head back and squinted a glare at his namesake, the sun. Auron had said he'd known Jecht, from after he went missing...Tidus had never really questioned it, honestly not caring that much (and also, simultaneously, paradoxically, caring too much) and not wanting to hear about his asshole award winning deadbeat of a dad.

But now, caught in the same situation he'd always just figured the old man had ended up in, even if just subconsciously, he thought hard on it, and realised - Auron had to have met the old man after he'd gone missing. Auron, after all, was decidedly a foreigner to Zanarkand soil, and Jecht himself had never left the city.

Anyway. Tidus shook himself. It didn't matter, really - not in his current situation, probably not at all. Either way, whether it had happened the moment he went missing or sometime after, Jecht was dead. Auron wouldn't lie about that.

Sighing, Tidus surveyed the 'landscape' before him. The vague and shadowy landmass he had seen on the horizon had grown somewhat clearer as he had gotten closer, hopping from piece of rubble to piece of rubble, hoping the stone would hold steady and not give way beneath him, swimming or wading through the water only when necessary. He'd considered remving his boots, so hit feet wouldn't stay soaked in the frigid water, but ultimately decided against it. With all the scrap and stuff floating about, who knew what damage going barefoot could do.

There was a sound to his left, a splashing to large to be either wave or current in the mostly still and calm waters Tidus had found himself in, and shuffling to lean slightly over the edge of his current resting rock, Tidus peered down cautiously, straining his eyes to see through steel-grey water.

Bad idea.

"Argh!" With a yelping shout that made Tidus glad for the first time that he was on his own, he fell back onto his backside as he instinctively threw himself away from the spines that had just flashed into and out of his vision, quick as lightning, leaving only a blinding afterimage.

Fiend. A water fiend - vicious, and the reason why most never ventured too far out into the seas surrounding Zanarkand.

Tidus swallowed. He had a sword, sure, but literally no idea how to use it beyond trying to copy some things he'd seen Auron do throughout his childhood, or basically just swinging it wildly and hoping he hit the fiends with the sharp end.

It was then, subconsciously biting down on a cracked lip a worry a piece of peeling skin off of it and wincing, staring down at the waters and trying to think of a plan that didn't end in him being fiend chow but coming up blank, that Tidus met his saviors.

"Rao," a girl said, leaning over the railing over an approaching ship and pushing up a pair of goggle to reveal wide eyes. How had he not heard that engine. "Yna oui y Yevonite? Fryd yna oui tuehk uid rana?"

-x-

Rikku blinked. Everything about this situation was profoundly weird.

The boy - and that's what he was, probably only a year or so older than her, at most - was giving her a sort of blank look that she was very much familiar with, the complete bafflement of most Yevonites when encountered with the Al-Bhed and their tongue. That was the least weird thing about this. It was the only not weird thing about it.

At her cries for the boat to stop it's rotation and get up close to the boy she had spotted, Linoc had come back out onto the deck to stand by her, and had brought friends.

"Fiend?" He suggested, though he sounded unsure of this.

Honestly, Rikku couldn't blame him for the absured suggestion. The boy was as blonde as any Al-Bhed she had ever seen, but his eyes didn't match and he didn't know their tongue. His clothes were so outlandish she wondered if he'd just strung enough scrap pieces of cloth and leather up to cover enough to keep warm, and he was carrying a sword almost as big as he was.

Also, he was standing in the middle of the Baaj ruins, surrounded on all sides by water, with not a single vessel within leagues of their location. Rikku knew this, because Al-Bhed always checked the areas they salvaged for the presence of Yevonites before entering.

Well, Baaj was an old place, and a temple as well - so spiritual land, right? Maybe this boy was a gh-

No. Bad Rikku. She shuddered. Don't even think that. Krucdc yna hud naym.

"E tuipd ed," Rikku answered Linoc, and then called down to the boy (who was still frozen, squinting at the ship as of half sure it was a hallucination) once again, this time in the common tongue.

"Are you lost?"

He blinked, but then smiled at her. "Very," he said, and - oh, that was relief. Relief someone spoke his language? How rude. True, Rikku might be the only one on board fluent in the common tongue, but the Yevonites idea that all the Al-Bhed were uneducated was very much false.

"So, er," he laughed sheepishly, and ran a hand through his blonde, salt stiff hair. "Do you happen to know where we are?"

What a weird question. Sure, there were lots of places around Spira that were reduced only to rubble, but only a few with a temple, and only one in the ocean. "Baaj," Rikku answered honestly, staring wide-eyed at the boy as he reacted with nothing but confusion.

"Fryd ec ed?" Linoc hissed from beside her. "Fryd ec ra cyoehk?"

She waved him off as the boy responded.

"Baaj? Where's that?"

A chill ran down Rikku's spine that had nothing to do with the slight breeze coming off of the ocean's surface. "What do you mean, 'where's that?'" she demanded, and he blinked.

"I mean...where is Baaj?" his tone showed his confusion. "Particularly in relation to Zanarkand?"

Now, it was Rikku's turn to blink. "Zanarkand?" she repeated. "What about Zanarkand? Sin destroyed it a thousand years ago. What does that have anything to do with Baaj?"

Down on his little rock, the scales of fiends too small to reach either him or the boat circled, and the boy stood rooted still, paling.

-x-

Sin destroyed Zanarkand a thousand years ago.

We called it Sin.

Tidus swallowed, as glimpses of memory - those few hours that he had lost - came creeping back into his mind like a wave of ice washing over him, knocking him flat, drowning him.

Oh. How had he forgotten? Stress? Head trauma?

Didn't matter. He'd forgotten, but now he remembered - the fiends invading the streets, that horrible and beautiful creature Auron had called a sinspawn, whose death had hurt so much - and that everlooming sphere of water, that had slowly crashed down onto the city, carrying what Auron had called Sin.

His breath came faster, harsher, as he realised - Zanarkand was gone. Had been gone for a long time, apparently. A thousand years, the girl had said.

He felt numb, and it wasn't from the lingering cold.

"Hey," he said weakly, and almost didn't recogise his own voice as he called out, shaky as it was. "Do you think I could come aboard? I mean, with the fiends around here..." he faltered, unable to continue. He didn't want to think about fiends. Didn't want to think about much at all, really.

The girl seemed hesitant, reluctant, biting down on her lip as she glanced from him to the men that must be the ship's crew behind her, but eventually, thankfully, she answered with a nod. "I'll get you a rope," she said. "Do you think you can climb up?"

Tidus considered the height of the ship to his little rock, and the distance of the water between the two. Climbing the rope would be easy - but he'd have to be submerged in that water, even if only for a little while. He'd have to be quick, or they'd get him, drag him under - away from the rope, and the first people he'd seen in what felt like years.

"Yeah," he said, when it was clear the girl was still waiting for an answer, hovering by he railing on the ship's deck. "I can climb it."

She nodded once again, and turned to the man standing closest behind her, scowling at Tidus in a way that made it clear he wasn't trusted. She spoke to him in that strange language - clipped but stretched at the same time, syllables sometimes guttural - it made no sense to Tidus whatsoever, sounding entirely like gibberish.

The man walked off, presumably to get that rope, and the girl cast her gaze back to Tidus. "Just a minute," she promised. "Then we'll get you off of there." She smiled. "Never let it be said that the Al-Bhed abandoned a person in need!"

Tidus tilted his head to one side, squinting up at her. "Al-Bhed?"

-x-

Rikku gaped. What?

"Fryd ec ra cyoehk ypuid ic?" Varun asked.

"Eh? Fryd tu oui sayh?" Next to Varun, a crew member Rikku didn't know the name of grunted out a question.

"E raynt res cyo Al-Bhed," Varun said. "Rikku, fryd ec ra cyoehk ypuid ic?"

"Hudrehk," she answered swiftly. "Ra fyc ycgehk ev fa fana Al-Bhed." Her mind was whirring, and that was the only logical explanation she could come up with. His confusion seemed alomst deeper than that, but -

How could anyone be questioning of what the Al-Bhed were? It seemed almost as if, until this point, the boy had never even heard of their existence.

Huh. Maybe he was a gho-

No. Bad thoughts, bad thoughts, la la la la la.

"I'm Rikku," she said, taking from Linoc the rope he had brought to her as he came back to stand by her side on the upper deck. "What about you?"

The boy watched as she lowered the rope, throwing it down into the water. "Tidus," he said, voice distractd as he watched the fiends swarm over the rope excitedly, no doubt wondering if the thing that had made the splash and disturbed their waters was food. After a minute in which the waters directly below the rail Rikku leaned over were so active with fiends they seemed to bubble and froth, as if boiling, he cautiously stepped into the water, mid-calf where the rock dropped off into deep water, and bracing against the edge of the ruined stone, launched himself at the side of the ship.

-x-

Tidus gritted his teeth as white hot pain slammed into him in the form of hard steel, but kept his eyes open, even though they were watering.

The impact of him slamming into its side had reverberated through the ship, and hollow echoes trembled throughout both the ship, and the waters it stood still in.

Where was the rope?

There - maybe a metre to his right, easy grabbing distance. Treading water, pressed against the sun-warm, salt-wet steel of the ship, and increasingly aware of the fiends that must be all around him, Tidus surged forward, and gripped at the rope that the 'Al-Bhed' girl - Rikku - had dropped. He had no honest clue what an Al-Bhed was, but the girl had identified herself as one, and that seemed to have included the people on the ship with her. So...maybe some sort of team, or organisation.

"Here," as Tidus reached the top of the rope, Rikku and the man that stood closest to her, the one that had gone to get the rope, each gripped him by a shoulder, an armpit, and helped to hoist him over the railing. Truthfully, Tidus was incredibly greatful for the assist. Incredible leg and upper body strength he may have, well more than enough to get over such a railing - he was exhausted, and aching, and bruised all over.

No surprise, really. If - if...whatever that thing had been, the thing Auron had called Sin - had dragged him through - what, time, space? - with what appeared to be the majority of downtown Zanarkand (if in pieces, admittedly) - then it wasn't all that unbelievable that he had gotten a bit battered on his 'trip.'

He swallowed, closed his eyes briefly and blocked out the unintelligble chatter of the people around him on the ship for just a few seconds. He didn't want to think of Zanarkand. He didn't want to think about how many others got sucked into that creatures grip, only to be desposited in fiend filled waters, and eaten. Didn't want to think about how many must have just died in Zanarkand from the water, falling buildings and invading fiends - and thus, how many corpses must be submerged in the water he had just spent hours in.

"Hey," Rikku's voice, jerking him out of his stupor and back into the present. "Are you okay?"

Moving dry, cracked lips, Tidus gave a sharp nod as he answered. "I'm fine."

The look on her face said she doubted that, but at least she didn't call him out on it. She stood up from her crouched position, kneeling beside Tidus who had slumped down to the floor, and began to call out in that strange language. With some grumbling and sighs from the men after she had finished speaking, Tidus watched in dazed surprise as they wandered off, to whatever it was they had been doing before he disrupted their day, he supposed.

Rkku stared down at him, and Tidus realised in no small amount of surprise, that there was no way she could be older than him - she was his age, at most, and yet all of the men on the ship, older than her - had listened, and obeyed, when she had spoken.

"You'll have to work while you're on the ship," Rikku told him cheerfully. "But once we've finished with the salvage trip, we can drop you off wherever."

"Zanarkand," Tidus said seriously, partly to see her reaction, see if he really had somehow been transported one thousand years into the future - mostly because he had no idea what else to say; where else to go.

Rikku made an aborted laughing sound, stopping with wide eyes as she took in the lack of humor on his face. She paled.

"Are you a Summoner?" she asked, and her voice was hushed, glancing over her shoulders as if scared someone would come back above deck and overhear her, and that wasn't what she wanted.

Tidus could have played along - maybe should have tried to - but he was tired, his head was pounding, and Rikku had, quite literally, saved his life when he had nothing to offer her in return. If he couldn't trust her here, could he ever trust anyone.

"No," he told her. "I don't even know what that is."

She blinked at him. "Eh?"

"I'm from Zanarkand," he said. "No joke. The last thing I remember before ending up here was some...whale thing, just destroying everything." He hesitated, before deciding not to mention Auron. "We called it Sin."

Before him, Rikku had gone extraordinarily pale. "We're you close to Sin? The toxin - it can confuse the mind-"

"I don't know anything about any toxin," Tidus interjected. "All I know is that everything went to hell, and then I woke up here."

Rikku bit her lip. "So, you really think you're from Zanarkand?"

"I really am from Zanarkand."

She was frowning, appearing tense and unhappy - but then her eyes lit up. "Well, there's one way to know for certain," she said happily.

"Yeah?" Tidus asked. "And what's that?"

"If you talk to one of the Fayth," Rikku said, nodding to herself as she grew more excited. "They'd probably be able to tell."

"The Fayth?" Tidus tilted his head. "What's that?"

Rikku smiled. "They're the spirits of the temples, and they grant Summoners Aeons," she said. "It's why I thought you were one - a Summoners pilgrimage always ends in the ruins of Zanarkand, and there is a temple here in Baaj, but it was submerged underwater a long, long time ago." She pointed, to that vague, large shape in the distance that Tidus had figured was an island, or some sort of landmass. "I don't know if there is a Fayth there," Rikku admitted. "No-one does, its been so long since Baaj sank. But..." she shrugged. "The other temples are watched over and kept by Yevonites, and only Summoners are granted access to the Chamber of the Fayth." Her eyes were dark, serious. "It's a long shot, but it might be your only chance. It's definitely the only temple you'll have free access to."

The information she had piled onto him was almost overwhelming, and at least a good half of it made absolutely no sense to Tidus; he had no idea why she had so readily believed in him, either. But he got the base meaning of what she was saying - if he did this, he had a chance of figuring out what had happened to him, what had happened to Zanarkand.

(And maybe Auron? A voice in the back of his mind whispered. He had been with you, remember?

With a scowl, Tidus shoved the voice back down into silence. He didn't want to worry - think, didn't want to think about Auron, not when there was no way of knowing if the answer was a good one, a happy one.)

He hissed in a breath through his teeth. Held it for a second. Breathed it out low, and slowly. "So," he said, tilting his head back to stare directly at Rikku. "If I want to see this Fayth, what do I have to do?"

She grinned, her eyes all but sparkling, the liight dancing through them the same way sun danced on water. "If it's there, it will be submerged underwater, like the majority of the temple," she said. "Are you up for a little deep sea exploration?"


	6. Fifth Chapter

Once Rikku anounced to the crew that Tidus would be helping them with their salvage, the general attitude towards him grew warmer. Oh, sure - they still seemed to think he was some sort of trickster fiend (how and why else would he be in the middle of Baaj?) and so kept a wary eye on him constantly - but so long as he earned his keep, and didn't try to kill any of them, they seemed content to let him be.

Rikku, who was pretty much the only person he could understand on the ship and vice versa (and thus had quickly become his best friend in the entire world), had cheerfully led him through the ship for about an hour after their talk had ended, babbling endlessly in a mix of Kandian and whatever language it was that the Al-Bhed spoke, switching between the two as she switched her attention from him to the crew members loitering about the halls under deck, clearly curious about the blonde stranger with a giant sword making himself welcome on their ship.

She'd introduced a few to him - but honestly, the only one that had stuck in his head was Linoc, the man who had brought the rope - and even then, only because he had joined their little party and was now marching silently behind them, gaze glaring a hole into the back of Tidus' head.

Sweat dripped down his neck. Everything about this was nerve-wracking.

Seemingly happy to ignore the large man looming over them, Rikku nudged his side to get his attention, and pointed at one of the signs that was pinned up all over the ship, written in a script that hurt Tidus' head almost as much as the entire situation he found himself in did.

It was Kandian, but not. Some of the lines too thick, some not there at all, all together too rounded and closed where Kandian was a series of open, sharp lines interconnecting - there were enough similarities that Tidus could make a guess at some of the characters, but had no idea if he was guessing right, and even then, the order they were arranged in made absolutely no sense - probably because the words were written out in the language that the Al-Bhed were speaking.

Even if he couldn't understand what they said, however, he was good at memorisation, and as Rikku pointed to each word seperately and told him what they meant, he made a quick note to remember them all, particularly the one she said read 'danger.'

"Fa yna huf ybbnuylrehk dra uidcgendc uv dra dasbma," A voice called down the hall, causing the three of them standing in front of the sign to turn. A man stood leaning out of one of the door placed periodically down the hall, goggles and head coverings removed to reveal swirling green eyes (similar to Rikku's) and a vibrant shock of white-blonde hair. "Fa yna ypuid du drnuf tufh yhlrun, ev oui yna nayto?"

Next to Tidus, Rikku nodded eagerly. "Syho dryhgc!" She called back, as the man ducked back into the room. Then, she turned to Tidus. "We're about to dock," she said. "Well, as much as one can dock in rubble." She shook her head. "Anyway - do you need anything? Wetsuit? Goggles?" A dubious look at the sword he still held, clutched at his side. "A gun? They're rare, but we have a couple for emergencies."

Tidus shook his head, no. "I'll just have to deal with the sword," he said. "I have no idea how to use a gun."

Rikku's eyes went wide. "But-" she cut herself off, with a side glance at Linoc, still looming, and leant in closer to Tidus, lowering her voice to a whisper. "But you're from Zanarkand!" She protested. "Machina weren't forbidden back then."

"Machina are forbidden?" He burst out, momentarily distracted. Then winced, because that was loud, and now Linoc was looking at him.

Rikku nodded. "Uh-huh," she said. "Have been for, I don't know, forever? Since the Yevonite Order was established, at least."

"Well, uh - guns are machina, yeah," he said. "But they're kind of also lethal weapons, and back in my time we didn't get to just carry those around." His tone was confused, he knew. Every word Rikku was saying was going right over Tidus' head, and she seemed to pick that up from his wide-eyed stare of confusion, because she sighed and shook her head.

"I'll tell you later," she promised. "Once we're in the temple and no-one can overhear."

"But I thought that none of the other guys here could speak Kandian," he said slowly. "In fact, why are we whispering now? Linoc can't understand us, and standing here whispering will only make him more suspicious."

Rikku waved his concerns off. "We're teenagers," she said dryly. "If he's suspicious of our whispering, it's only for one reason - the same reason he's been following us vigilantly for the past hour."

Tidus blinked as the meaning of her words hit him, and could feel his face turn bright red, the blush spreading down his neck as well. Rikku laughed lightly, before continuing.

"There are loan words," she said. "He'd pick up on us talking about Zanarkand and any other places, and most Yevonite terms are kept untranslated, too. They're titles, after all." She tilted her head, eyes alight with curiousity. "What's Kandian?"

"It's - uh, it's what we're speaking?" Tidus said, and it came out as a question. "It's the tongue of Zanarkand."

"Huh," Rikku huffed out. "We call it the common tongue, and the Yevonites call it Spiran. To the Ronso, and the Guado, it's plain Basic."

"You know none of what you just said to me made any sense, right?" Tidus said. "Literally none of it."

Rikku laughed, and started to walk down the hall the way they had come, back in the direction that led to the upper deck. "You're lucky you can pass for Al-Bhed with that hair of yours," she giggled. "Or at least a half-and-half - you don't have the eyes, though you could cover that with a pair of goggles."

Tidus scowled. "I'm not wearing goggles," he told her staunchly. "What do you mean, the eyes?"

"Al-Bhed eyes," Rikku said. "Green spirals."

"Oh," Tidus said, snapping his fingers. "Yeah, I kind of noticed that."

Rikku shrugged. "You don't have them, so we can't make it out like you're fully Al-Bhed," she said. "Nevermind the fact that you can't speak our language. But even if it means you get discriminated against a little bit, it's better than trying to pass as a Yevonite - you clearly don't know anything about the church or its customs. You'd be judged as a heretic."

Tidus shrugged, squinting a little as they stepped back into sunlight. "Hey, this...Yevon thing, it didn't exist in my time," he said. "How am I meant to know anything about it?"

"You have a point there," Rikku admitted. "But people will expect you to just know this stuff anyway, and it's not like you can use I'm a timetraveler as a valid excuse." A look over her shoulder. "So long as you're actually telling the truth, that is." Her tone was doubting, but she smiled at him, as if to make she he knew she was just teasing. "Most people think the Al-Bhed are illiterate anyway. They probably won't think anything of it if you don't know the customs."

"People aren't very nice to the Al-Bhed, huh?" Tidus asked quietly, stepping forward so he stood next to Rikku on the sun-soaked deck, watching as the members of the crew hurried about to make the ship safe to dive off of.

"It's 'cause we're different." Rikku sighed, shrugged. "And, well - we're not hume, you know? Not really."

Tidus blinked. "I didn't know it was possible to be anything other than hume," he marvelled. "In Zanarkand, you were either hume, animal, or fiend."

Rikku looked just as bowled over by that reveal as he did by hers. "Wow," she said. "A lot can change over a thousand years." She sighed again. "The Ronso and the Guado aren't hume, either," she said. "Just a warning. And unlike us Al-Bhed, they look it, too."

"You mentioned them before," Tidus said. "The Ronso, and the Guado."

"They're more welcome in Yevon then we are," she said. "Because they follow the teachings, for the most part. Some of them are even Maesters in the Order. Al-Bhed will never be welcome, because we tinker with machina, and we don't share our language - our secrets - with outsiders."

"I don't know," Tidus laughed. "You're being pretty open with me, here."

That brought a smile to Rikku's face. "I haven't told you anything secret yet," she giggled. "But the moment I do, I'm going to have to kill you." She continued to giggle to herself, and for a moment Tidus couldn't tell if she was joking or not.

His face then must have been priceless, because a quick glance at it reduced Rikku into a mess of blubbering laughter, and a quick look over the shoulder revealed a faint smile on Linoc's face, as well.

"Lmayn!" A man called out from the bow, waving both hands in the air. "Nayto vun tejanc!"

Rikku smiled. "Want a diving suit?" she asked, and Tidus shook his head.

"I'd rather not," he said, grimacing as he rolled his shoulders, feeling his now dry clothes crack. "I mean, these are already salt-soaked and stiff, anyway."

"Yeah, I guess," Rikku said. "It's a shame about the leather, though."

Tidus shrugged. "I'm sure it'll be fine. The blitzspheres at home are always treated with some chemical - if it can withstand that, it can handle a little bit of salt water."

"Well, they are your clothes." She made a gesture at the men hovering around the anchor chain, and called out something short and sharp in Al-Bhed. "Come on," she said, tugging him to the edge of the boat, in a spot starboard side that had no railing. "Down we go!"

-x-

Auron shook out stiff limbs, and grimaced.

More than soft, he'd gotten old. His stay in Zanarkand had been less harsh on him then the same amount of time spent in Spira may have been - but there was really no denying it. A decade on from Braska's pilgrimage, and Auron was feeling each and every one of those years piled onto him now.

He scowled, and cursed Yunalesca in his mind a thousand times over, a soothing habit he had grown used to over the years since his death.

And, lord have it, he was dead. So why did he still have to age and suffer all that came with the act?

A short, bitter, humorless laugh. If Jecht were here, he would have laughingly blamed it on Tidus. 'That's what parenthood will do to you!' Braska...he would have looked on disaprovingly, but with a slight smile on his face, and later (once Jecht was out of earshot) would quietly admit to him that his gray hairs had double since Yuna's second birthday, and had only grown more prominent with each passing year.

He sighed, and tried not to focus on the past. Doing so had never done him any good, and only brought him more heartache over the years.

So. Baaj. Not a place he had expected to end up, but he had to admit it did make sense. If there was anything at all of Jecht left inside Sin beyond mindless instinct now, then of course he would want to drop his son off in an area where it was unlikely he would run into too many curious eyes and quesitoning people. And, besides - it was known that the Al-Bhed made trips to the ruins, for one reason or another.

(This knowledge was, of course, met with indignant outrage by the majority of Spira and the church, yet - due to the fact that Baaj was both far away and lying in ruins, they didn't bother to do anything about it, presuming it best to just leave the crazies to their own business.)

Well, if there were Al-Bhed around, he should at least be able to find passage to a more populated area - or even Besaid, if the little settlement he had instructed the Ronso to take Braska's daughter to still existed. Yuna would need him too, and soon; as much as he wished to keep searching for Tidus, the bare facts of the matter were that after hours of stalking through the temple, there had been no sign of the boy. Jecht could have dropped him in Bevelle, for all Auron knew - and until he got out of here, and to some form of civilisation, it wasn't like he would be able to hear any news telling him otherwise.

He grit his teeth. Hissed out a breath. Shook his head, and kept on walking.

It was only a short while later that he stilled, tilting his head. Was that -?

Yes. It was.

The sound of clanking metal, and voices calling out to one another in a language that he hadn't heard in over a decade - but still recognised the strange sound of it - clipped around some consonants, but slurring all syllables together.

"What luck," he murmured to himself dryly, knowing that sooner or later something was going to go drastically wrong. It was just how the world, how life, worked for him. It was thankless.

Thinking hard, Auron sheathed his sword and raised up his arms, palms forward in the universal gesture for 'I come in peace,' and dug deep into the recesses of his mind for what hazy knowledge he had left of the Al-Bhed language.

"Rammu," he called out. "Bmayca ramb."

The men on board the ship he was approaching - two of them, standing beside a large chain; spotters, most likely, watching for their divers when they came up - jumped, one of them swearing out a low oath.

The other - stilling, his eyes widening, clearly recognised him. "Guardian Auron?" he asked.

-x-

"Ryja sanlo," Varun swore under his breath. "Yhudran uha?"

Next to him, Avri sucked in a sharp breath. "Guardian Auron?" he said, tone full of wonder, and Varun felt his jaw go slack.

The words had been in the common tongue, yes, a language the two of them collectively only knew about a handful of words in - but the words in question, two of them, were words that Varun recognised, particularly in relation to one another.

But...to have that man, that legendary Guardian, disappeared ten years ago suddenly reappear - to them, nonetheless, among the ruins of Baaj...

Well. It honestly screamed that Varun had been out in salt-soaked sun for far too long. He'd been eating right, and sleeping properly, but the ocean sickness could strike at any time. Maybe he should go and have a lie down, see if he felt better by the time the dinner bell rang.

Avri had seen him too, though - had been the first to recognise him. "Linoc!" he hissed to Varun, gripping one of his shoulders and shaking it. "Ra cbaygc suna uv drec duhkia dryh yho uv ic. Ku kad res!"

"Fa luimt fyed vun Rikku," Varun pointed out, and then winced as Avri clipped him gard around the head.

"Cra yht ran Yevonite uhmo zicd fahd tufh," Avri muttered sourly. "Drao femm hud pa ib vun ruinc oad." He jerked his head at the red cloaked man standing on a piece of stone below them, submerged in water ankle deep. "Tu oui fecr du gaab drec syh fyedehk?"

Varun swallowed. "Hud byndelimynmo."

"Drah ku yht vadlr Linoc," Avri sighed. "Yht pa xielg ypuid ed."

-x-

Auron sighed, settling deeper into his seat on the small boat, more of a speeder than any sort of ship, as he left Baaj well and truly behind him.

Behind him, by the engine of the boat, steering them away was an Al-Bhed man, hair windswept and flecked with foam from the ocean as they churned their way across it. He grinned at Auron, but made no attempt at conversation, knowing that they were unintelligble to one another.

After an hour or so of stilted communications with the man who had introduced himself as Linoc, Auron had managed to gain passage to the nearest settlement on the mainland - Luca. Honestly not his desitnation, far from where he wanted to go - but he wasn't impolite enough to make the Al-Bhed go even further out of their way to deliver him to Besaid, not after taking a vessel (no matter how small) from them. He could gain passage to Besaid just as easily from Luca, and going to Luca first would allow him to stock up on some items a decade in Zanarkand had left him sadly lacking, as well as catch up on what had happened since he had left.

It rankled, that he had been unable to find Tidus, and he scowled at himself as a small inner voice insisted that the idiot kid was going to get himself killed, had probably already lost the sword.

It was simple, after all. Auron was well known in this world, and Tidus never ran out of curiousity, or questions. Leave it long enough, and he wouldn't have to worry about finding Tidus - because the boy would find him.

Sighing once more, and closing his eyes slightly, Auron tried to get some rest as he settled in for the long ride, not knowing what would await him in Luca.

 _-x-_

 _She stilled, growing silent as she felt the dream enter her waters, the territory she had claimed for herself._

 _Missing her voice in the chorus, her siblings called out to her, lilting, questioning, planitive._

 _?_

 _Regaining composure, she raised her voice once more, rejoining the hymn. The others around her settled, withdrawing mostly from her presence, though her eldest sibling lingered, spirit clining to spirit as they roved through her, suspicious and wary._

 _She tried to contain her amusement. Really, so old and so removed from humanity - and yet her siblings were all such children._

 _The thought made her sad, inasumch as she could feel that emotion - or any other - anymore._

 _They shouldn't spend so much time around her, she mused. Bahamut was right to keep an eye on her._

 _After all, she ruined children. It was the only thing she had ever accomplished in life._

 _But this - this was her chance, yesyesyesyes yes! The dream was coming to her -_

 _She could use him, save him._

 _Save her son, save him._

 _Bahamut was wrong. The youngest of the Fayth she maybe, not yet impartial enough to let go of her last human trappings - her name, her memories, her gender, her son -_

 _But she was far wiser than all of them. She was one who had been mother, fool and human, and having learnt from those experiences -_

 _She knew what she must do._

 _She raised her voice even louder amidst the chorus, joy swelling throughout her. The amusement of some of her other siblings - Valefor, Ixion - swept across her as she sang loudly for the first time in years. After all, underwater as her temple was, there was no-one to hear her call._

 _Until now._

 _Surrounded on all sides by her fellow Fayth, her siblings, singing for the sake of their temples and the Dream, Anima felt something rise up within her that she had not felt in years._

 _Hope._


	7. Sixth Chapter

He was pale, Tidus noted. Blanched almost white under the normal tan of his skin. Given he'd spent almost a full day out in the sun, that was probably concerning.

Gripping the thin, dented metal of the sink in the industrial style bathroom on the boat, he took in a deep breath. It could just be the dim, bluish light of the bathroom that was making him look so washed out. His hair, after a day spent soaked in salt, had been thoroughly washed free of the gel he usually brushed through it each morning - made to hold steadfast in a blitzsphere it may be, but even it could not hold up against roughly twelve hours spent in and out of the ocean. It now hung around his face, still damp - longer than it usually would be and framing his eyes; he looked younger than he usually did.

Or maybe that came from the vulnerability, the fear and confusion that would most likely become a permanent part of his face, if not his very being. His talk with Anima had been... far from comforting. Before they'd arrived back at the boat (he still hadn't asked its name - didn't most boats have names?) Rikku had sworn to him, seriously, quietly, that she would keep what had happened in the Chamber of the Fayth just between the two of them. He had, quite honestly, been too numb, too shell-shocked, to respond or care - particularly with the pulsing, white-hot pain still travelling through him.

Upon arriving back at the boat, evening just beginning to fall as the sky darkened to the first stirrings of night, Tidus had swiftly been snapped out of his stupor as a tattooed, blond mohawked man had stormed over to him, snapping out what he could only presume to be questions in rapid fire Al-Bhed. The man, it had turned out, had been Rikku's brother (called Brother - and yes, it was confusing), no doubt wondering what his sister had been up to, to return so late. With the suspicious and furtive glances being cast his way, Tidus had idly wondered (still mostly detached from reality; the world having taken on a dreamlike state) if in his absence more consideration had been given to him being either a fiend or a ghost. Even as Rikku stepped in and, arms on hips, countered her brother's every protest, the suspicion hadn't died down.

But they had agreed to allow him to stay on their ship, at least until they reached something resembling civilization. (Once Rikku had told them he decidedly wasn't a Yevonite, and his own ignorance proved that fact one hundred times over, the mood towards him considerably warmed.) It was Rikku, after all, who was technically in charge of the trip, even if her brother and a few others were there to observe - and so long as there wasn't any immediate, life-threatening danger, they'd allow her to make her own decisions as she saw fit. Once their elders judged her, it would be on her head and hers alone.

After that had been sorted, Tidus had been all but dragged under-deck by Linoc - next to Rikku, he spoke Kandian most fluently, so it made sense.

 _Spiran_ , he reminded himself. _Not Kandian, not here. Spiran_.

He released the sink, turning so that his back was pressed to the wall next to it, and slid down so his knees rested against his chest - pressed his head down on them and wrapped his arms around them. Linoc had pressed a pile of clean clothing to his chest and gestured him in the direction of the bathroom, a combination of broken Kand- _Spiran_ , broken Spiran - and charades making it clear that he would stand 'guard' while Tidus changed.

He wondered, briefly, how long he would have to mope. He doubted Linoc would intrude on him or come barging in - but the boat wasn't all _that_ big, and he doubted there was more than one bathroom.

The pain flared again, a dissonant beat in his chest out of tempo with his heart, and Tidus ducked his head further into his knees, drawing into a ball.

This wasn't _fair._ He was a blitzball player, an up-and-coming star in his first year of the league, professionally. For the love of all things divine, he wasn't even of a legal drinking age yet! He wasn't - he _couldn't be_ -

 _You are your father's son_ , Anima's words from earlier echoed through him, a soulsong not dissimilar to the sinspawn's, and just as irrevocably etched into his memory. _You are his son, and you are all that entails._

A soft knock came at the door, and Tidus briefly debated whether or not the possibility of drawing Linoc's ire was worth ignoring it.

"Hey," a voice, equally as soft as the knock, was muffled through the steel of the door. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Rikku," Tidus said, aware that Linoc was very likely right next to Rikku, and coming across as a crybaby to a bunch of strangers he was essentially placing responsibility for his life on was the last thing he wanted to do. "I'll be out in a second."

As quietly as he could, Tidus levered himself off the cold floor, wincing as his knees and butt burned from being positioned on icy steel for so long, his arm pressed against the wall for balance as his back protested standing once more. Shortly thereafter, it was only a matter of straightening and reaching for the door's handle.

Rikku was standing with her back to the door, but as she heard it open, she whirled around, letting out a breath of air as she took him in. He had adamantly refused to wear the Al-Bhed's typical clothing - preferring at least part of his chest to be covered, and firmly against the wetsuit style spandex of the majority of the outfits. (And the buckles, and the straps, particularly the ones that looked like they would cause chaffing in uncomfortable places.) Instead the crew had, much to his gratitude, scrounged around for some 'casual' clothing for him to wear as he waited for his own to be washed free of salt and then dried.

The clothes weren't too outlandish – probably wouldn't be out of place in one of Zanarkand's gyms, actually – just a simple overhead sleeveless hoodie vest in the deep hues of a sunset over ocean (which he wore over the thin, grey cotton shirt that had been on the top of the pile Linoc had handed him), and a pair of pants to match, the deep scarlet pink of sunrise with the turquoise of the sea. Really, the only parts of his own outfit he wore were the pendant wrought with the crest that belonged to both team and family; the heavy, combat style boots he was no incredibly glad he'd allowed Auron to talk him into buying; and the woven bracelet that had rested over the gauntlet he wore to most league games – one of the only personal items he had left, now, made by Rena, the red-headed girl of the Abes, who had given it to him as a welcome present at the beginning of the season, when he'd officially joined the Abes as a front liner.

"You look better," Rikku said, and she was wearing different clothes too – and orange sweater vest, and green shorts. With the wetsuit she had worn all day gone and her hair released from the confines of the headgear she had worn (pulled back into a collection of braids and beads that were as colourful as Rikku herself), she, too, looked much younger than she had earlier – though maybe that was just because aside from Linoc, there was no-one here.

"I feel better," Tidus said, not entirely truthfully.

Rikku smiled at him, and just as Tidus was about to ask why she had come down here to look for him, she perked up, one finger raised to point at him and jab at his chest. "Oh! That's right!" she said. "Apparently we missed a lot of excitement today, you know."

Tidus laughed, somewhat bitterly. "What, Anima wasn't enough?"

Rikku shot a swift, subtle glance Linoc's way – but the elder man was scowling down at the book he held in his hands, paying them absolutely no attention beyond the periphery – and even if he _did_ happen to be listening in on their conversation, Rikku had said it herself earlier – no-one knew the name of Baaj's Fayth…or its Aeon, or even if they existed. According to Anima, there was only one other person in Spira (in existence) who knew of her – and he was _decidedly_ not here.

"No, Anima was plenty of excitement," Rikku amended gently. "But a lot happened all around." She raised an eyebrow at him, clearly waiting for him to take the bait she was blatantly dangling in front of him.

Obligingly, Tidus gestured for her to go on.

"Before you turned up, I was going _away_ from the temple proper and doing some deep-sea salvage," Rikku said. "So when I decided to go to Baaj with you, I had to delegate. I had Amak lead a team into the area I was supposed to go – and get this – they found an _airship_." She was all but giggling, rolling back and forth in place on the balls of her heels, and honestly? Tidus could tell why.

A pinnacle of technology Zanarkand may have been – they still hadn't progressed beyond hover drives, to his knowledge. The prospect of a flying ship? It was almost unthinkable, and for a brief moment, Tidus forgot all his worries in the wonder of what Rikku was telling him. "Does it work?" He asked, eagerly, and Rikku made an aborted shrugging motion.

"We haven't tested it yet, and we won't be able to at sea," she said. "But that's not all! While we were making our way through the Cloister of Trials and the other teams went to their salvage areas, the crew left behind here – on the ship – met _another person_."

Tidus first thought – the first thing his mind jumped to – was that, somehow, someone else from Zanarkand had come to Spira, had somehow survived both Sin and then this strange new time. But Rikku (perhaps reading it in his eyes) shook her head, _no_.

"This guy is definitely Spiran," she said. "He's a legend, and he's been missing for like, ten years – I think? Anyway, Avri and Varun met _Guardian Auron_."

Clearly, Rikku wasn't expecting that name to mean anything to him – was only telling him because she was excited by this fact and wanted to share it with him. So, when he stiffened and blanched, making a choking sound that caused even Linoc to glance up from his book with his scowl fading away to furrowed brows – her expression was one of deep concern.

"Tidus?" She asked.

" _Auron_ ," he gasped out, mind dazed and vaguely aware of the dissonant pulse by his heart thundering a drum beat into his ears. "He…he practically raised me. He's been my guardian for ten years." Even clouded over as his mind was, covered in a haze of _he's alive_ and _he's not here_ and _what the hell is going on_ – the shock of Rikku's words; both the bizarre usage of the term 'guardian' in such a formal and respectful way, the fact that Auron was both from and well known in Spira – pierced through, penetrating the denial that had immediately tried to establish itself within the forefront of his mind.

Rikku was gaping at him. " _Really?_ "

Stiffly, Tidus nodded, and Rikku's expression grew from concerned to troubled. "Come sit up top with me," she said. "We can eat and talk there."

Tidus glared at her. "I don't _want_ to _eat-_ "

"Yeah, but you need to," Rikku said bluntly. "And the hallway in front of the bathroom isn't exactly the best place to be having this conversation."

Acquiescing that Rikku was making far more sense than him at the current point in time, Tidus numbly followed after her as she headed back to the upper deck, speaking briefly to Linoc in Al-Bhed before continuing on past him.

"Linoc will bring us some food," Rikku said. "It won't be anything too appetizing, though – just regular ship rations."

Tidus shrugged. He was far from caring.

Letting out a heavy _whoof_ of air as she sat down, curling her legs underneath her, Rikku stared up at him expectantly, and so Tidus sat.

"What did you mean?" Tidus asked. "When you said that Auron was a legend here?"

Rikku bit her lip. "Well, honestly? If it wasn't for all the weirdness that has happened today, I'd be wondering if your Auron and Guardian Auron weren't two completely different people. But now…" Rikku sighed, and then scowled. "I'm probably not the best person to be talking to this about. I was only six years old when High Summoner Braska brought Spira the Calm, so I don't remember all that much – and it wasn't like I knew Guardian Auron anyway – so most of what I know comes from stories. High Summoner Braska defeated Sin, and his two Guardians vanished afterwards – Guardian Auron was said to be spotted for a short while after the Calm came, but then he disappeared too – just like Jecht."

The intermittent pain from his imposter heart had become barely a thought in the back of his mind, but it roared into full, substantial fury as waves of white heat crashed down like static over him, even as he was chilled to the bone.

Somehow, through what surely must have been frozen lips, Tidus spoke. "Jecht?" He asked, and his voice was an empty calm he did not feel.

Rikku made a noise of assent. "Yeah, High Summoner Braska's second Guardian. Apparently he came from literally _nowhere_. Like, no-one has ever been able to figure out where in Spira he was from. But apparently he was a blitzball player? And a really good one? I…"

Rikku's voice faded into white noise as the static in the back of Tidus' head grew to a crescendo, blocking out the world around him.

"Rikku," he broke in, not paying any attention to what sentence of hers he had just interrupted. "Anima explained a bit about those things you were talking about earlier – but I think you need to go more in depth for me, please."

Mouth still open as if Tidus' own words had merely put her on pause rather than derail their conversation, Rikku nodded slowly, and began to give Tidus a rundown on some of the terms he'd heard being thrown around all day – Summoner, Sin, Aeon, Guardian. He could tell that she was mostly brushing over them, only giving him enough information to form a coherent picture of the place he found himself in – and he was honestly grateful for that.

The world she described?

It was _awful_.

Outside of Sin, those brief few moments of pure terror in Zanarkand – Tidus hadn't faced too much hardship in life. Plenty of grief, yes; but he'd never had to fight for his life in any real way. The acceptance of death that Spira had… how it seemed to be just a fact of life – it was _horrifying_.

Thankfully, Rikku seemed to think so too. "That's why, even if the teachings forbid it – even if it gets us branded as heretics – we use machina. In the hope that, one day, we'll find something that can kill off Sin, whether just to bring a Calm, or permanently. We…" She sighed. "We want to stop the senseless sacrifice of Summoners."

Tidus nodded slowly. "Jecht is my old man," he said quietly, and Rikku jerked in surprise as he pulled their conversation back around to its original thread. "He vanished ten years ago, just a few months before Auron showed up, claiming to be a friend of Jecht's."

Rikku's mouth fell open, and the somber mood that had overtaken lifted – if only by a little – as she gaped at him. "So, what?" She said, throwing up her arms. "There's some sort of time bridge between Zanarkand and Spira?"

Tidus shrugged. "Beats me," he said. "But doesn't it make sense? What if Sin isn't killed and then _comes back_ ; what if it can move through time? You kill a Sin in the present and sometime in your future a Sin from the past pops back up. Calm over." The pulse slowed, and Tidus tried not to notice how pale Rikku had become, how still. He hadn't meant to come across anywhere near as flippant as he just had – had only meant to lay out what was in his mind, slow and frozen though it was.

A gust of evening air hit him with the spray of the ocean, and he shivered, huddling deeper into the quilted material of the hoodie he had been loaned.

"It keeps coming back," Rikku's voice was faint. "It dies, but then it comes back. It's haunted Spira for over a thousand years…and it _always comes back_." Her eyes met his, and though she was still pale, they fair blazed with determination, green fire spiraling into him. "We're going to do it," she said. "We have to."

Tidus' mouth went dry. "You mean…what Anima said?"

She nodded firmly. "Auron only left a few hours ago," she said, standing and heading towards the door that would take her below deck. "Avri was taking him towards Luca. If we leave now, we might be able to catch up with him before he gets passage to one of the isles." She looked back at him. "Well?"

Tidus swallowed. It was, he knew, his decision alone in the end. If he said _no_ here – if he turned his back on Anima and Rikku both – then that would be that.

The pulse was slow, patient – the pain dimming to almost nothing. For the first time since promising those kids he would help them with blitz, his mind felt startlingly clear. No help would be forthcoming – this would be a decision he would have to make on his own. This was, after all, _his_ story.

"Okay," he said quietly. "We'll meet up with Auron – but…" he hesitated, standing himself so he could jog to Rikku's side and grip her arm. "Unless we absolutely have to…let's _not_ do what Anima said."

A brief, mutinous scowl flashed across Rikku's face, before she nodded slowly. "Fine," she said. "Now, help me find Linoc – he must be nearly done cooking by now, so we'll eat, and then we'll go."

She turned to head further into the still open doorway, pulling her arm from his grip – and the pulse flared, not a second dissonant heartbeat – but a flash of fear that almost drove Tidus to his knees.

He managed to remain standing, but that didn't truly matter – because barely a second later, the entire boat _rocked_ , the steel of its structure shuddering – and both Rikku and Tidus were thrown across the deck, tossed with the waves as they washed over the railings like sheets of liquid ice.

Tidus gasped, and shuddered, automatically shivering as what felt like pure winter soaked him through to the core. Squinting, eyes bleary, he saw the orange and green of Rikku next to him – also experiencing the cold of the ocean's night waves.

" _W- what-_ " Rikku breathed out through chattering teeth, the boat rocking once again.

The pulse beat hummingbird fast in his chest, Tidus swallowed as he realized something. "Underneath us," he said shakily. "There's something underneath the boat."

Rikku blinked at him, then –

" _Sin!_ " The scream was guttural, primal, coming from above them – the crow's nest. " _Sin lusac!_ "


	8. Seventh Chapter

Gritting her shuddering teeth together, clamping them still _tightly_ , Rikku lunged for Tidus.

He let out a faint yelp as they collided - only barely audible above the panicked shouts coming from below deck as the doors she had opened swung wildly in the rocking left by Sin's greeting.

Quickly, before Sin could make another pass, Rikku straightened herself as best as she could, not letting go of either her grip on the railing or Tidus.

"Hang on to me!" She yelled into his ear, quickly relinquishing her hold once she felt his arms go around her. They flew to her belt, which she tugged off with numb, clumsy hands - the leather strap then looping through the side belt holders on both her and Tidus' pants. There was no time to gt below deck, not with the way the boat was moving, Sin still circling; and if they went overboard, Rikku didn't want to risk separation.

All they could do now was cling as tightly as possible to the ships railing - and hope for the best.

The waters were deceptively quiet, still. But Rikku knew that Sin wouldn't have just _left_ \- and judging by the way his eyes were roving over the ocean's surface, Tidus knew this too.

"I'm an idiot," he shuddered out, words muffled with a lisp brought on by the cold. "Should've thought."

"Thought what?" Rikku asked. Anything to take her mind off the terror slowly clouding it over.

"Sin brought me here," Tidus said. "So why wouldn't it be close by?"

Well, now Rikku felt like an idiot. "Hey," she said. "Do you think that's why it's here?"

Tidus blinked at her slowly, as if processing her words. Rikku scowled, and tightened her grip on the railing - even though her hands were so frozen they were practically frozen there, meaning the burning sensation she had just felt came from tearing off several layers of skin on the cold steel - the controls on machina ran better when they were cold (admittedly hard to do on Bikanel), why couldn't hume brains be the same way?

"Why it's here?" Tidus repeated her question back at her, with a different inflection of confusion.

"Like, if Sin really moves through time - what if it's all the one Sin? Zanarkand was the first time it ever appeared, you know. So a thousand years ago it destroys Zanarkand, ripping open some sort of time portal, and a bunch of people get sucked through it - landing in Spira. What if Sin keep appearing and reappearing because it's trying to kill those last remnants of Zanarkand?"

Tidus frowned, eyes searching the water - still calm, which was somehow more unnerving than if the waves were once more washing over the deck. "So...it's here for me?" he said, tone uncertain.

"Sin exists only to destroy," Rikku recited. "Even if you drew it here, it doesn't mean it's your fault-"

 _Cold_.

-x-

Waking up, gasping, Tidus choked as all that filled his mouth was cold, salty water.

He was back in the ocean - pitch black in the dark of night, but glancing every way he could, the silver light of the moon, distorted through the water, showed to him faithfully the surface.

Utterly nerve wracked, Tidus swam for that beacon as fast as he could - after all, he wasn't alone. Rikku was still connected to him, tied to his side by her belt - and she wasn't moving.

Breaking the surface and taking in a much needed gasping breath, Tidus quickly fumbled with the belt on his side, his numb fingers finally managing to undo the clasp. Sending a quick mental apology to Rikku, he let it go, not even paying attention as it drifted into the ocean floor - he was too busy pulling Rikku up, angling her head out of the water.

"Rikku," he said, and his voice was salt-choked hoarse, even more so than it had been earlier that day. " _Rikku!_ " He punctuated that last call with a little slap, and gratifyingly, Rikku murmured and moved faintly under his hand, before bursting into full consciousness with a jerking movement that nearly sent them both back under.

Luckily Rikku seemed to come back to herself, awareness sparking in her face as she looked at him, then at the seemingly endless water surrounding them.

Pulling away from him (but only slightly), treading water, Rikku spoke. "Where's the boat?"

Tidus had been wondering that himself. "I don't know," he said honestly. Since he'd still been holding his breath _mostly_ fine, he couldn't have been unconscious all that long - same for Rikku. "I have no idea how we got so far away from it."

"We might not have," Rikku said quietly, in a small voice. "It might be below us. Don't you remember? Sin didn't just knock us overboard - it overturned the boat."

Tidus swallowed. "I think if that had happened, we'd see some rubble," he said as gently as possible. "Or the waters would be disturbed, or something. Sinks don't ship that fast." _And bodies float_ , he added silently.

"Yeah," Rikku said. "Yeah, you're probably right. Besides, there's no Sinspawn, no fiends-" She broke off, and frowned at the water. "No fiends," she repeated slowly.

"Explain for the clueless person over here?" Tidus asked, desperately trying to keep his mind off that fact that just because they had somehow been far removed from the ship didn't mean Sin hadn't sunk it.

"Sinspawn come from Sin," Rikku said, and Tidus nodded. He already knew that truth in painstaking detail - the ethereal chime of that Sinspawn's swan-song still swum through the currents of his mind, even now. "It leaves them behind as it goes. If we were anywhere near the boat, we'd probably have to deal with one. Since we're not, we should be dealing with fiends." An uncertain look at the water. " _Lots_ of fiends. Sin and it's spawn are the only things that scare them off." A flash of fear ran across her face. "You don't think Sin is still _near_ , do you?"

"No," Tidus said, and wondered how he could say that so firmly - as if _he_ had any idea where Sin was or wasn't?

Still, those words seemed to have been just the thing Rikku needed to hear in order to calm down. "That's a relief," she said, and then shivered. "I thought being submerged in the water meant you got used to the cold?" She scowled - and Tidus, to both her and his own disbelief, began to laugh.

"I don't think that applies when the water temperature is below zero," he said, and Rikku grinned.

"Bet you were wishing that you'd taken us up on the offer of a wetsuit now," she said, swimming forward to flick at his lips - which, more than likely were taking on a blue tinge.

"Whatever, booty shorts," Tidus snorted dismissively, laughing as Rikku made an offended yelping sound.

"Meanie," she said. "Meanie!"

A warmth came from that second, dissonant heartbeat still beating inside of him, a vague amusement as if it was watching them, and Tidus stilled, fighting the urge to press a hand to his chest and claw the foreign presence out.

Rikku noted his swift change of mood, and quickly sobered as she noticed the way his hands had curled into fists. "You okay?" she asked quietly, in a tone that implied she knew he was not and was inquiring whether or not he wished to talk about it.

"I'm fine," Tidus said with a tight smile - not wanting to burden her with his problems when she was so clearly putting on a brave face - worried about her friends and family on the boat, wherever it was - and when realistically she couldn't help him, anyway.

"If you say so," Rikku said, thankfully not pushing the issue as she drifted onto her back, squinting up at the sky.

"What _are_ you doing?" Tidus asked curiously.

"Trying to place us," Rikku said. "If you're going to run a boat, you need to know how to navigate by the sky - that's what my dad says."

" _Huh_ ," Tidus huffed out, and tilted his own head back, gazing up at stars that sent a weird chill through him. Underwater before, the sky had been distorted through the sea's surface - only the moon visible, and the moon was always the moon, never anything else.

The stars, though? While Tidus was no astronomer, Rikku had been right - if you lived on a boat, you had to know the sky. And the stars above him, while not _completely_ alien, were different enough to the ones scattered across the midnight velvet of his home sky to send a curl of primal terror through him - a whisper that grew to a panicked, roaring crescendo; _this is not my world_.

He recognised a few - though they were in utterly the wrong place, how _far_ was he from Zanarkand? - but for the most part, they were completely unfamiliar to him.

How long did it take for a star to die, for new ones to be born? Was a thousand years a long enough period of time?

Not noticing his moment of existential fear, so focused was she on her own perusal of the sky, Rikku made a sound of triumph. "Figured out where we are," she said to him, treading water to 'stand' vertical once again. "We're just off Kilika," she said. "It's this little beach town on an island, right by a temple, too. If we start swimming now, we should make it around dawn, optimistically."

"Well then," Tidus said, gesturing for her to swim ahead of him. "Lead the way."

-x-

Rikku's optimism had been just that - optimism; a cheerful, false hope.

"Oh, stop being such a downer," Rikku spluttered as he told her as much. "So I misjudged time and distance a bit. I was disoriented."

"Rikku," Tidus said, with a patience he did not feel. "It's _noon_."

Rikku squinted up at the sun, glaring at it like the traitor it so clearly was, burning directly above them in the middle of the sky. "Well, we can see Kilika," she pointed out. "Barring tragedy, we'll make it to shore within the hour."

"Please," Tidus grunted, floating on his back and kicking slowly. "Don't jinx us." He, too, had seen the land mass ahead of them and knew as well as Rikku that it appeared closer than it actually was. Realistically there were still several kilometers between them and the safety of solid, dry land - at their current, exhausted pace, at least an hours work without the breaks they had been having periodically, resting on their backs.

Rikku grumbled at him but didn't deign to speak in words.

They swam in silence for a while, Tidus' eyes eventually drifting closed as he moved only by listening intently for the direction Rikku was swimming in, trusting in the fact that this close to land she would not lead them wrong.

"This is the second day in a row," Tidus realised.

"Second day of what?"

"The second day I've spent submerged in the ocean," Tidus said gloomily, before doing a turnover in the water that refreshed him slightly, blinking the water out of his eyes as he turned to Rikku. "I've decided that I hate swimming, and I'm never doing it again," he informed her, and she snorted.

"Didn't you say you were a blitz player?"

"Not much of one without a team," he sighed, tilting his head so as to feel the warmth of the high noon sun on his face. This close to shore, in the middle of the day, the waters were much warmer - which he was grateful for - but after so many hours spent soaking in both salt and then sun, his skin was red, sore and cracked - and peeling.

Rikku wasn't faring much better. His own sunburn, at least, was mild - the clothes he wore covered all of him except for his arms and face, and his hair (while currently blonde) was naturally brunette - meaning he didn't have to worry about a fair haired persons weakness towards sunburn.

Rikku, unfortunately, did. Wearing a vest and shorts, most of her limbs were bare under the sun, and not only was she blonde - but strawberry blonde, meaning more than just the fair hair, she had a red-heads propensity to sunburn.

Basically, Rikku was a lovely shade of strawberry pink. Tidus briefly wondered if that was why the majority of the Al-Bhed he had seen aboard ship (including Rikku, for some time) had worn a wetsuit with face coverings - so while out at sea for possibly days, they did not burn.

A short while later, and something reached Tidus' ears that, after hours of nothing but the waves and Rikku, he almost thought was some manner of auditory hallucination.

But no - that was real. _Voices_.

He startled up, and realised that - somehow - they were only a few hundred metres out from shore. Next to him when he glanced over, Rikku's eyes were shining. "What are we waiting for?" she said, and dove back into swimming; no longer the half-hearted strokes of exhaustion, but full, _powerful_ kicks of eagerness.

Tidus swiftly followed her.

-x-

The people of Kilika - the ones who had gathered on the beach, the voices he had heard shouting in surprise at the two people who had very nearly just _washed up_ on their shore - were incredibly welcoming, even more so when they had (in all their shock and horror) found out that they had survived an attack by Sin.

"It's true, then," one woman had said, all but whispered; pale and frightened and clutching her daughter tightly to her chest. "I'd heard rumours that there had been sightings, but I didn't want to believe. Not when there hadn't been any attacks. But it's true. It's real. The Calm...is over."

She'd burst into tears shortly afterwards, and had to be led away home by a sympathetic young girl who wasn't entirely sure what the adults meant by 'Sin is back,' nor why one of the women who watched over her and her friends when they played at the beach was crying.

One of them men - who'd helped Rikku and Tidus, weak on their feet and with no land legs to their name after a full night at sea, to an inn where they could rest - grimaced apologetically at them, saying he was sorry for Marta's reaction, and that if they needed anything, they could just ask.

"Water," Rikku had then croaked out. "Please."

The man immediately rushed out with a promise of as much fresh water as he could carry, as well as some smoked fish and fruit. Tidus honestly wasn't hungry, and his stomach didn't much appreciate the idea of eating, but his brain scowled at the two of them and proceeded to use sense to beat them into compliant submission.

"Psst," Rikku hissed out in a whisper. "Don't tell them I'm Al-Bhed."

Well, they seemed like nice enough people to Tidus, but it was ultimately up to Rikku what and what not to divulge about herself, so he nodded. "But won't they figure it out?" He reminded her, tapping just beneath his eye.

Rikku shrugged, wincing and grimacing as the movement pulled at her burnt, peeling skin. "You'd be surprised how little attention people pay to the one key detail that can separate the Al-Bhed from the rest of them."

It was at that moment that the man - who introduced himself as Makao - returned, carrying a jug of cool, fresh water and a platter of various island foods. The food still didn't hold much interest to Tidus, though he did eat his share of it - but both he and Rikku fell on the water ravenously, eventually going through four jugs between them before they felt better.

On the fourth trip for water, Makao also returned holding a pile of soft looking, pale-dyed and lightly embroidered cloth on one arm. "The folk up at the temple heard we had a couple of Sin survivors down here," he said, noticing where Tidus' gaze had landed. "These are robes that the two of you can wear while you wash your clothes and wait for them to dry. And if you want to risk going through the woods, they said that there is a place for you to stay, up in the temple - at least until you've recovered."

Tidus repressed a frown, instead thanking Makao for his help, and asked if there was any place for him to wash the salt off of his body - trying to ignore the feeling of deja vu at the situation he found himself in, only this time on land instead of boat.

There were two reasons he felt himself reluctant to go to the temple and take up their offer of hospitality, even though without any funds he lacked any other option.

First, and most basic - he couldn't risk the Kilika Woods, not when they were, apparently, full of fiends. Even if he'd still had that sword that Auron had claimed was from Jecht (which he _didn't_ \- it was wherever his old uniform was, on the boat that could, quite possibly, be on the bottom of the ocean) he still had no idea of how to use it - so even if he could get his hands on a weapon, he wasn't going anywhere until he could confidently say he could wield it properly.

Secondly, finally, and perhaps most importantly...

| **It's me, isn't it.**

Tidus jumped, swore, and then tried valiantly to ignore the sudden pulsing, fast-paced beating of the phantom heart beside his own.

| _I thought you said we shouldn't talk._

| **Well, you're right. If you go to close to the temple, Ifrit will sense me.**

| _I'm going to go shower,_ Tidus thought bluntly. _Please leave me alone._

There was a stillness in his mind, and for a brief moment - a radiating stubbornness that proclaimed Anima was sticking around until Tidus acquiesced to talking to her - but then he felt her sigh in acceptance.

| **That frown you wear...you actually look your age** , she said quietly, and Tidus felt himself stiffen, because he heard the unspoken undertones to her words, courtesy of the intimate bond they shared.

 _Young,_ Anima meant. _You look young, like the child you are_.

Scowl deepening, the dissonant heartbeat once more fading away to a near dead-still, Tidus kicked out at the ground in frustration as his mind became his own once again.

"You're one of the ones that was near Sin, aren't you?"

Tidus jumped about a foot in the air as a voice came unexpectedly from behind him. Standing from where the voice had come was a girl with dark hair and equally dark eyes, who looked to be only a few years older than him, wearing beautiful clothes - a loose, long dress - made of elaborate weavings and bright colours, laughing at him with her eyes.

"Er, yeah," he said. "I was just heading to a place where Makao said I could wash off."

The girl hummed in agreement, nodding. "I'm here to collect your clothes," she said, gesturing to a woven basket resting by her feet; one that Tidus hadn't noticed. "Just dump them in the basket once you're done, and I'll get them washed for you." She smiled again, brilliantly (and with more than just her eyes), and Tidus barely kept the presence of mind to say 'thank you.'

She waved him off. "No, no, it's fine. You just survived Sin, clothes should be the last thing you have to worry about." Her face was drawn and pale at these words, and Tidus once again noted her probable age. If she was older than him, like his first instincts had said she was - then she must be old enough to have some memories of Sin - of the terror and grief brought by it. After all, according to Rikku, what she called the Calm had only lasted ten years this time around.

Wanting to bring back the girl's smile, brilliant as it was, Tidus stepped forward and held out his hand. "I'm Tidus," he introduced himself.

"Ah - Holly," the girl responded in kind, squinting down at his hand with her head cocked to one side, like a curious, exotic bird. "What do you expect me to do with this?"

"You shake it," Tidus explained, and then grabbed her hand to show her how. "It's a greeting where I'm from," he said as he released his hold on her.

Even if her lips weren't exactly pulling up at the corners, Holly's eyes were sparkling once more, so he took that as a win. He hated seeing girls sad - it reminded him painfully of all the times his mother would cry in bed with the door shut, and all he could do was sit by said closed door and wait for her to come out, hoping that his hugs would be enough to cheer her up.

(They never were. Only Jecht was.

 _Damn_ him.)

"And where are you from?" Holly asked. "Where were you, for Sin to wash you up on our shores?"

Well, Sin hadn't exactly ' _washed them up_ ' on Kilika's shores, but Tidus wasn't pedantic enough to correct her.

But, remembering what Rikku had said, instead of answering with the 'Zanarkand' that hovered on the edge of his tongue, Tidus instead went with impulse and blurted out the first thing that came to mind beyond that instinctive response.

"I don't remember," he said.

(In the back of his mind, Anima snorted with amusement.)

He then winced, because that sounded incredibly stupid, even to his own ears - but to his surprise, Holly nodded slowly, her eyes and expression sympathetic.

"I've heard that Sin's toxin can do funny things," she said sadly. "Mess with the mind, you know? Oh, I hope that girl that washed up with you is okay."

Tidus just gaped momentarily, and hoped that Holly didn't notice his surprise. Not only was there a physical, tangible reason for his flimsy story to hold up - but Sin had a _toxin?_ Oh, that was so unfair. Giant, time-warping abominations that could create monsters that scared even fiends should not also be _toxic_.

"Um, yes, the toxin," he agreed distractedly, and there was no mistaking Anima's amusement, even though she had pulled back enough from the forefront of his mind that they could no longer truly converse.

"Well, hopefully you'll recover soon," Holly smiled, and then - for some reason - performed the blitzball sign for 'victory.'

Already knowing from just the few hours he had spent in Spira that the place was full of weird, Tidus attempted to just roll with it, but something of his confusion must have shown on his face, because Holly gasped in dismay.

"You don't even remember the prayer?" she exclaimed in horrified disbelief, and after moment of deliberation, Tidus said truthfully:

"I don't know any prayer."

Holly had expression on her face, wide-eyes and pursed lips, almost as if she was trying to swallow a mouse. "Well, I'll show it to you," she said. "You can't _not_ know the prayer!"

Once more, she performed a slow rendition of the victory sign, before looking to Tidus expectantly. Half-heartedly (knowing that he was probably never going to use this 'prayer' again) he also did so, not even really needing her to show him the movements he'd probably been born knowing, thanks to Jecht's influence upon his genetics.

"...Well," Holly said finally, in a somewhat grudging tone. "I suppose it will do. But you can't present yourself at the temple until you've straightened it out a bit!"

Privately, Tidus vowed to always keep his movements sloppy and below par if and when performing the prayer, and Anima chuckled.

-x-

Once Tidus had left the room, Rikku had laid still for five minutes, trying to work her way through all that had happened.

If the boat - and the people on it - had weathered through Sin's attack, and survived, there would be no way to find out here, on a firmly Yevonite settlement. She couldn't just _leave_ \- not yet, not when both she and Tidus were still so weak from their ordeal - but she _could_ reconnoiter.

Besides. If she just lay in bed, thinking, she'd drive herself mad.

Nodding to herself, glad to have a purpose to focus on, Rikku swung her legs to the floor, determined to find Makao - or someone else who could help her. Maybe the inn's proprietor?

So, with that plan in mind, she stood (stumbled, and straightened herself) and began to _carefully_ make her way downstairs.

"Oh! You can't wash off just yet, that boy with you hasn't come back." The woman manning the inn's front desk smiled at her apologetically, and while she was nowhere near what Rikku would call _old_ \- looked, in fact, younger than her father - her hair had streaks of gray running through it, and faint, delicate creases lined her face.

Morosely, she wondered how deeply those lines would grow before another Summoner sacrificed themselves to bring a brief Calm.

 _If Tidus would just -_ no. Bad thoughts. Calm down. _It's not his fault. Not his responsibility._ She took a deep breath. "That's fine," she said, returning the woman's smile. Rarely did one look into the eyes unless they had suspicions - so best to allay them before they ever thought to try. "Actually, I was wondering if you had a schedule of boats to Luca?" she asked. Not only was Luca the best place to go to find out the fate either way of her ship and family, it was the place Sir Auron had been headed.

The woman - _Iole_ , her nametag read in the common tongue - smiled at her in a sweet, understanding way. "You must feel as if you need to get away from here as quickly as possible," Iole nodded slowly. "But Kilika is safe, as it has been since before the last Calm - and very nearly the Calm before that, too. It's the temple, you see. The presence of the Fayth burns Sin, and keeps us safe, praise be to Yevon."

Iole bowed, cupping her hands in the Yevonite prayer, and Rikku hastily copied her, hoping that her movements weren't too awkward or clumsy.

"We were headed to Luca before Sin derailed us, actually," Rikku said. "So if I could just know when the next boat to Luca arrives..?"

"Well," Iole hummed, considering. "With confirmation that Sin is out in the waters now, who knows? But, anywhere from a few days to a week. Probably not anything beyond that - it's the boat coming from Besaid, you see, for the tournament."

Rikku lit up. "The tournament!" she crowed. "Oh, I'd forgotten all about that!"

"Sin's toxin will do that to you," Iole stated dryly.

"I have to tell Tidus," she said, and Iole yelped, even as she was running (if somewhat unsteadily) out the door.

"That's improper, young lady! He's _washing!_ "

-x-

"Tidus!"

Halfway through lacing up the robe the temple had given to him, frowning at the fact that it was incredibly soft yet also incredibly stupid looking, like a giant, close fitting nightgown with billowing pillowcases for sleeves, Tidus paused, convinced that he had just heard Rikku calling for him-

"Ti _dus!_ "

-and yep, he had.

| **Maybe you should finish getting dressed?** Anima stated wryly, and yelping, he hurriedly laced the robe the rest of the way up.

"Here!" he called out. Rikku swiftly came into his sight - still wearing her soaked clothes, and he grinned. "Sorry I took so long," he said, trying not to think about his hair, where dark roots were showing through, the same colour as his father's.

"Never mind that," Rikku waved off his concerns casually. "I'll take my turn in a sec." She jumped forward, gripping at his hands. "We need to get to Luca," she said. "There's a massive blitzball tournament coming up - everyone in Spira will be going there!"

Tidus stared at her, bemused. "So?" He asked. "I thought we were heading in that direction anyway."

Rikku shook her head. "We thought we had to hurry there, in case Sir Auron would leave," she explained. "But does he really have anywhere to go?"

"After ten years?" Tidus said dryly.

" _Exactly_ ," Rikku smirked, smug as the cat that got not only the canary, but the cream, too. "And I doubt he has any interest in blitzball-"

"-he doesn't," Tidus reassured her.

"-so he must have gone there, knowing anyone you encountered would point you there to try and find someone you knew!"

To Tidus, that seemed an incredible logic, and though he didn't like it, he could feel Anima's agreement buzz in the back of his mind.

But he had no better ideas, and even said Fayth was finding herself caught up in the almost contagious excitement of Rikku as Tidus felt his lips tug up at the corners in response to Rikku's own smile. "So when do we leave?"

"In a few days, a boat will arrive from the isle of Besaid," Rikku explained. "We just have to get on it!"

"We don't have any gil," Tidus pointed out, and Rikku shrugged.

"Milk the 'I-was-attacked-by-Sin' thing for as much as we can," she advised. "If we say we desperately need to get to Luca they'll probably take us, or at least let us off with an 'I owe you.'"

Tidus laughed. "Well, here," he said, gesturing to the curtained area behind him, in the light woods just along the coast, reaching into it to wad up his still damp clothes. "You can shower now."

"Thanks," Rikku laughed, and walked past him, drawing the curtains shut.

| **Now, Tidus?** Anima's voice was hesitant in his mind. **Can we talk now?**

| _Talk about what?_ Barely holding back a sigh, Tidus pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, not even paying attention to the twinge of pain that flared as he twisted skin already abused by the sun.

| **Are you...willing to help? I know that Rikku girl-**

| _Yeah, well, you should have wormed your way into_ her _mind, then!_ Tidus snapped out viciously, feeling guilty despite himself as he felt Anima recoil within his mind.

| **I - I didn't mean -** Anima fell silent, before continuing, **I didn't mean to hurt you, Tidus.**

| _No-one ever does_ , Tidus said bluntly, walking up to the basket Holly had left, dropping his wet clothes into it, leaning up against the springy trunk of one of the many trees surrounding Kilika, closing his eyes to better focus on Anima's voice, faint even within his mind. _One thing I've learned is that intentions don't really matter_.

| **You're wrong,** Anima said fiercely. **Intentions** _ **always**_ **matter. Intentions are the difference between a good man and an evil one.**

| _But collateral damage doesn't matter?_

| **You're not collateral,** Anima protested. **I won't allow you to be.**

| _So you can use me?_

| **Because we're going to make use of each other,** Anima thought firmly. **We need to trust one another.**

| _You_ forced _your way_ into my head, Tidus thought. _Not really feeling the trust here, Anima._

| **Ana,** Anima thought quickly. **Anahata was my name when I was human.**

| _And this means...what, to me, exactly?_

| **You know my name, my human existence. If you call on me now, I'll be stronger for it. You'll need that, because there's only one other that can call for me - and he knows my name, too.**

| _Your son. Seymour. You mentioned him, back at Baaj._

| **He's falling into darkness,** Anima's thoughts were tormented, filled with agony. **He no longer hears my voice...if he ever did at all. Trapped as I was in Baaj by Yunalesca's last spiteful act towards me, I had no way to help him... Please understand, Tidus. I need you if I'm going to save my son.**

 **And if you're going to survive Spira, then you need me, too.**


	9. Eighth Chapter

The week spent in Kilika waiting for the boat to arrive from Besaid goes faster than Tidus could have imagined.

Kilika, it turns out, is less of a small seaside village and more of a sprawling mass of settlements all along this one island coast. Built on stilts over the ocean itself is Kilika proper - some shops, the inn that Tidus and Rikku have been staying in, and, most importantly - the dock, to welcome boats in. From Kilika proper there is a trail that leads straight through to the temple (which Tidus has been studiously avoiding), so as to help Summoners fast track their pilgrimage all the more efficiently.

West of the essential heart of Kilika is the area Tidus has been spending most of his time in - partway between soft white sand and thick jungle foliage, it is the area where he first met Holly upon 'arriving' in Kilika, and it is the 'workers zone' of the island, so to speak. Whereas the East side cultivates, fishes, and hunts, it is the west that turns the fruits of the islands labours into usable goods.

And it is in the west that Tidus has learnt some of the most useful things since coming to Spira - namely, from Makao, who upon hearing that he was a novice with the blade, had offered him some lessons in exchange for some hard labour; cutting back the creeping vines that threatened to choke through the west settlement - which was also one of the residential areas.

He's still far from anything resembling _skilled_ with a blade, particularly since the sword Makao had loaned him had just felt _wrong_ in his hands, too short in reach, too light in weight, awkward in his grip in a way Auron would have called _unbalanced_. Makao, luckily, had been knowledgeable enough to see that the style of sword found in Kilika was not for Tidus - and instead, taught him best how to adjust as well as he could to any sword, and a few swings and stances that should translate well to about any weapon, including staffs or daggers (a glance had been sent at Rikku then - she'd been watching the proceedings with avid interest, and when Makao's gaze alighted on her twin blades, she'd simply laughed ruefully and rubbed a hand through her hair, before thanking Makao and saying that she was just fine, combat wise).

"Then why isn't your brother?" Makao had asked, and if Tidus hadn't been so focused on moving his blade through the exercises Makao had showed him _absolutely perfectly_ , he probably would have yelped. As it was, once what the older man had said had fully registered, he nearly tripped onto his own sword.

Rikku, too, had clearly not expected the words Makao had spoken, but though pale, had shaken them off before Makao could comment. "He's a pacifist," she sighed, with a very put upon look in a ' _what-can you do?'_ sort of way, before continuing, "at least Sin seems to have scared that out of him."

(Behind Makao's back, though still surprised by his comment, Tidus stuck his tongue out at Rikku.)

Makao had simply hummed in a thoughtful way, saying that it wasn't bad to wish for peace and an end to fighting, before turning back around to bark instructions at Tidus, who tried desperately to focus and pay attention through the chiming amusement of Anima's laughter in the back of his mind.

Later on, after Makao had called an end to their lesson for the day and the sun was already beginning to set, Holly had shown up in the clearing they had claimed earlier, carrying a woven basket filled with fruit and fresh bread for both him and Rikku.

"There's enough for you to eat, as well," Rikku said, pulling Tidus up from his exhausted slump into something vaguely resembling a seated position, and curling her own legs under her. "You should sit with us!"

Holly, already turning to walk away, hesitated even as she glanced over her shoulder, before slumping her shoulders in acquiescence as Rikku emphatically patted the ground across from her.

It was after Holly had sat, brushing her long, colourful skirts down, that Rikku spoke. "You live with Makao, right? Why does he think we're brother and sister?"

Tidus blinked, interrupting Holly accidentally as she opened her mouth to speak. "Wait, you live with Makao?" he asked.

Holly nodded, her dark hair shifting with the movement as she pulled her knees to her chest. "Before High Summoner Braska brought the Calm, I lived with my parents in a small coastal house on Spira's mainland. They...died," she said quietly. "Fifteen years ago, now."

Tidus quickly performed some sums in his mind - if he was right, and Holly was only a few years older than him, nearing twenty...

Then she would've have to have been around five or six years old when her parents died.

Judging by how Rikku winced next to him, she had figured that out, too.

"I'm sorry," Rikku said genuinely. "I didn't mean to upset you in anyway."

Holly shook her head with a small smiled playing on her lips. "I upset myself," she said. "It's silly, they died so long ago I don't even remember them...yet I still find myself missing them."

"It's not silly at all," Tidus broke in. "They were your parents. Of course you miss them." Rikku shot him an aside glance, but he ignored her, his attention on Holly.

She smiled weakly at him, her eyes alight with curiosity. "The way you speak, you sound so certain..." Sympathy, or maybe empathy, shone through on her face. "Have you lost your parents, too?"

"A long time ago," Tidus confirmed. "How did your parents die? You said it was before the Calm, so..." He trailed off, suddenly becoming aware that in his desire to change the conversation topic before Holly began asking even more questions about his parents he may have crossed a line.

But Holly did not seem bothered. "Oh no, it wasn't Sin," she said. "If it had been, I doubt I'd be alive right now. I probably would have died with them." She bit her lip, before finally saying: "It was the Al-Bhed."

Next to Tidus, Rikku grew very, _very_ still, and he forced himself not to glance her way.

"They broke into our house," Holly recalled. "I know they were Al-Bhed because of the language they were speaking - and we couldn't see their eyes, but they wore the clothes of Al-Bhed, too; those goggles. They killed my father first, and my mother hid me under the bed, told me to be very quiet. Then they killed her, too, and raided our home of...everything. It was a few hours later when a group of Crusaders came upon our house - Makao was one of them. He found me, retired, and moved us to Kilika. We've been here since."

"Why..." Rikku's voice was quiet, lost, but as Tidus chanced a look over he saw the spirals in her verdant green eyes were all but burning with some sort of inner fire, and prayed that whatever deity watched over time-traveling blitzball players would make sure Holly would not look too hard into those eyes, so soon after recounting such a memory about Rikku's people. "Why would the Al-Bhed do that?"

Holly shrugged. "I don't know. Like I said, I couldn't understand their language." She sighed. "But they _were_ Al-Bhed, so I doubt they would have even needed a reason."

"What do you mean?" Rikku's voice was cold, and she was all but glaring death at Holly. Quickly shoving the last of his portion of the bread into his mouth, Tidus prepared to cut Rikku off if she showed signs things were about to get any uglier.

Holly blinked. "Well...they've turned their backs on Yevon's teachings. They use the forbidden machina, even though they know the hubris such power brings draws Sin. What else could they be, but evil?" She sounded genuinely confused, not a single drop of malice in any of her words - yet they were horrifying just the same, and Rikku, clearly having had enough, stood and stalked off wordlessly, lines of tension showing in her back.

"I - did I say something wrong?" Holly looked to Tidus helplessly. "I didn't mean to upset her."

Mind working swiftly, Tidus answered as best he could. "Some Al-Bhed saved her life once," he said. "I guess it upset her to know that they weren't all good guys."

Holly's mouth formed an ' _oh_ ' of understanding. "I should go talk to her," she fretted.

" _No_ ," Tidus said, all but shouting the word as he latched onto Holly's wrist, visions of Rikku punching Holly out dancing through his mind. He'd seen more than enough 'cat-fights' break out in the pre-game and after-show of his games to know when one was on the edge, and if Holly tried to talk to Rikku right now, she'd probably tip her right over it.

"That's why everyone thinks you're siblings, you know," Holly told him, dark eyes somehow reading his mind through the emotions showing on his face. "You act like it."

Curious despite himself, and _really_ wanting to make sure Holly didn't try to track down Rikku, Tidus asked her what she meant.

"Makao and I aren't related by blood," Holly clarified, "and I don't call him my father, but that _is_ how I think of him. And it's how I act around him, too - like I'm his daughter. You and Rikku act like siblings," she added. "Particularly in how you worry about one another." A pointed look.

"Yeah, I'll be going after her in a sec," Tidus said. "But - Holly," he smiled at her. "She isn't angry at you, you know that, right?" The last thing he wanted to do was make Holly worry - next to Makao, she'd probably been the most helpful during their stay in Kilika.

Holly shook her head - not a denial of his words, but a reassurance that his worry was far from necessary. "Go hunt your sister down," she said. "I don't think she should be wandering around alone right now."

-x-

Rikku was fuming, staring moodily at the broad leaves of one of the many low hanging trees in the jungle surrounding Kilika, when footsteps coming from behind her alert her to the fact that someone has trekked into the woods to find her.

"So how'd you track me down?" She asked; turned to face Tidus as he kicked through the last barrier of leaves between them. He's sweating from the evening heat, the sky already pitch-black ink; a faint trail of blood down his cheek from a thin cut - a branch must have sliced him when he was pushing his way through the foliage.

"Magic," he quipped automatically, and even feeling as sick to her stomach as she did, Rikku knew bullshit when she heard it.

"Anima told you, didn't she?"

Tidus scowled. "If she's going to live in my head, then she can damn well earn her keep."

Rikku giggled, despite herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "But are you telling me you're charging your Aeon _rent?_ "

Tidus opened his mouth, likely to respond to her, before his face went slack, his eyes distant, in a way Rikku was just beginning to recognize - his attentions turning inward as he focused in on Anima, rather than the physical reality surrounding him.

"What's she saying?" Rikku asked curiously, troubles, for the moment, forgotten.

"She thinks I would get on well with some Aeon called Yojimbo," Tidus said, but there was also a scowl on his face - and not the mild sense of violated annoyance he usually gave off from talking to Anima, that had been lessening more and more over the week as his anger waned and he grew use to the Fayth sharing head space with him. "I think...I think she's calling me a cheapskate."

Rikku snorted, before sighing. "Nice try," she said ruefully.

"I don't know what you mean," Tidus said, blinking at her innocently, and Rikku laughed, because butter _totally_ wouldn't melt in that mouth.

"You're trying to distract me," she said. "Make me think of something else."

Tidus shrugged, neither confirming nor denying. "Well, maybe they weren't Al-Bhed," he said. "She was only a kid, if someone dressed like you guys and babbled in your language, I doubt she would have known the difference. Hell, from what you've told me, most _adult_ Spirans wouldn't know the difference."

"Yevonites," Rikku corrected quietly. "Most adult _Yevonites_. Don't separate us from them like they do. We're as Spiran as they are."

"Sorry," Tidus said. "I didn't mean to-"

Rikku held up one hand. "They probably were Al-Bhed," she admitted. "And that's what makes me _so mad_!" The last part was shouted out, hands pressed to her face to hold back her screams, and she _definitely_ wasn't crying.

A tentative hand fell onto her shoulder, and Rikku glanced back to see Tidus looking at her worriedly.

Sniffing, she wiped at her face. "We don't hate Yevon," she said weakly. "Yevon helps all of Spira, how could we? We just think that blindly following the teachings in the hope of Sin just one day swimming far away and never returning is fatalistic and stupid. We think that the Summoners shouldn't have to keep sacrificing themselves in a never ending cycle of death. But we don't hate the church, and we don't hate its people." She turned to face him fully. "That's only most of us, though. There are - there are extremists, who hate how we're treated, and think that Yevon and all those who follow it burn."

She yelled out something unintelligible, a sound made of nothing but helpless rage, and wished she could just _kick_ something. "It's _their_ fault we Al-Bhed have a bad reputation. All the rest of Spira thinks we're evil murderers because of _what they do!_ "

" _I_ don't think you're evil," Tidus said, and then hesitantly added. "And neither does Anima. She said that she's seen real evil, and you and your people are far from it."

Rikku let out a shuddering breath. "I know, I know," she said. "I'm just-"

"You're just angry," Tidus said, and his voice and eyes were understanding, if sad. "It's hard to believe that people can be so stupid, huh?"

She let out a weak laugh. "Yeah," she said. "We should get back before any fiends around think that we'd make a tasty meal."

"Oh, we'd be fine," Tidus said, even as she raised one eyebrow at him in an ' _oh-really?'_ way. "I trust you to protect me."

Rikku snorted. "What about me?"

"What _about_ you?"

-x-

(The next day, Holly shyly sidled up to Rikku and apologized for upsetting her the evening before. Laughing, Rikku waved her off; Tidus, watching from afar, sighed in relief - until a sharp rap atop his head drew his attention.

"Focus, boy," Makao said, the flat of his blade still raised for another whap.)

"What's with all the excitement?" Tidus wonders aloud, later, after Makao was pulled away by a girl named Hui (one of Marta's daughters) for some sort of meeting with the Kilika Beasts, the island's sole blitzball team.

He'd been talking to himself (with Rikku helping Holly with something down at the docks), but as was becoming more and more common - and also, somehow, less shocking, more _natural_ \- Anima answered.

| **The boat is meant to arrive tomorrow, yes?**

| _Just after sunrise_ , Tidus confirmed, switching to speaking internally so no-one thought him insane - though the stretch of beach he had found himself drawn to for one reason or another was empty of life except for him.

| **...Tidus?** Anima's voice was hesitant in his mind, sounding slightly worried - maybe feeling his own pensiveness as he stared out over the waves.

| _Can you sense that?_ He asked, and Anima shuddered.

| **...Yes,** she admitted, though very reluctantly.

| _That...it's Sin, isn't it_.

She didn't answer in words, but he could feel her restless affirmation.

| _How can I sense it? I felt it in Zanarkand, and then again on the ship. Anima...why can I tell when Sin is near?_

| **...**

| _Anima?_

| **I don't know.** Anima's voice was quiet, almost inaudible.

| _Please don't lie to me,_ Tidus pleaded, _Anima, I need to know._

| **I really can't tell you, Tidus. I - I wish I could, but I don't know any more than you do...you shouldn't be able to do this...unless...**

| _...unless?_ Tidus lead on, and received the mental equivalent of Anima shaking her head at him.

| **Not yet,** she said.

| _But-!_

| **Not** _ **yet**_ **,** she repeated, firmly. **For now, just keep an eye on Sin. If it gets any closer to Kilika...**

Anima's words trailed off, but Tidus didn't need her aid to form a horrifying mental image - he could do that for himself.

"We have to warn them," he said lowly. For now, the faint buzzing in the back of his mind, the awareness that stung through him was quiet - Sin was near, but he wasn't getting any closer, at least not yet.

| **You can't!** Anima was _alarm_ in the back of his head, **Tidus! You can't endanger yourself like that!**

| _Endanger myself...? Anima, all those people could_ die _if Sin attacks-_

| **And you'll die if you warn them!** Her words were harsh, fierce and cutting, but with a genuine edge of worry lying underneath. **How will you explain to them that you can sense Sin, when even you don't know why? They'll think you're some sort of fiend or spawn, and they** _ **will**_ **turn against you!**

There was a deep panic in Anima's voice as shouted so fast in his mind that the words slurred together, a line of fear that had Tidus immediately backing down, if only to lessen the sickness beginning to curl in his gut.

| _Okay, okay,_ he thought. _But I should at least tell Rikku_.

Suddenly much calmer, and relieved, Anima made a noise of assent.

| **You should,** she agreed. **After all, isn't she working in that inn by the docks?**

With a dawning sense of horror, Tidus realized what Anima meant - if Sin headed for Kilika, the commercial heart of the island, a gathering of building and paths built directly on, above, the water - it would be the first to go. The people there -

Would be the first to die.

He swallowed. It was an awful, _awful_ thought, a horrible, crushing sense of realization and responsibility to have - and Anima was right, he _couldn't_ tell anyone.

Hopefully, Sin would simply remain hovering at the edge of his senses...

But, just in case it didn't, Tidus steeled himself. He thought on all he'd seen since coming to Spira, the acceptance they had for death as a fact of life - and, as much as he could, he embraced it.

If it came down to it, he would save himself. He would save Rikku. And beyond that, he would save anyone else he could.

Anima gave of a sense of a dark, grim approval, and he wasn't sure how to feel about that.

| **If it comes down to it,** she said, **don't hesitate to call for me.**

Tidus paused in his brisk walk from the beach to Kilika proper, surprised at her words.

| _I thought you didn't want people to know I could summon, or especially that I had you as an Aeon,_ he said slowly.

| **If it gets to that point, it's already too late,** Anima responded pragmatically. **But remember - I can't fight Sin, so there's no point in summoning me if that is your purpose. And you can't summon me and then run - a Summoner must fight by their Aeon's side - so using me as a distraction won't work, either.**

| _We'll think of something_ , Tidus sighed, the sense of Sin not growing any stronger, per se - but definitely feeling more ominous, like the looming of clouds holding a thunder snow.

-x-

Rikku stared at the crimson red staining her hands, and sighed. If she never had to soak cloth in dye again, it would _still_ be too soon.

But, as Iole came over to inspect her drying works and gave her a nod of motherly approval, Rikku felt herself preen, the grief and worry of the past week gone from her mind for a fleeting moment.

"That colour should stay fast," Iole said. "Ha! Take that, Engi!" The older woman grinned down at Rikku. "Engi is an old rival from Besaid," she explained. "Their main export is cloth, you know - but she's never been able to beat my silks, especially not in intensity and durability of colour."

Holly, working alongside her with a similar batch of long, winding silks, arms stained up to the elbow with red a shade darker than hers, laughed. "I'll bet they last as long as they do because the dye takes fast with the hopes and prayers of your helpless labour force."

Iole chuckled. "Besaid just doesn't know how to work in silks," she said. "Cottons, sure, you can't find any softer, or more durable - but the silkworms over there are too few in number for them to get a real production up."

"What are you going to do with these, Iole?" Rikku asked curiously, taking in the hundreds of metres hanging to dry, more still soaking, and the piles that had already dried and been washed of excess dye outnumbering the wet and drying by more than double.

"These are funeral silks," Iole said, immediately sober, and beside her Rikku felt Holly shudder, before shaking her head and returning to her work. "Wrappings for the dead. With Sin back, the temples will need these."

Rikku stared back down at her hands, at the crimson dripping down them, and couldn't help the mix of both relief and fear that welled up - relief that it wasn't blood, fear that someday, it _would_ be.

"Rikku?"

Tidus' voice came from behind her, and, jerking, she nearly sent the barrel of dye and silks she had been working on flying. Turning, his face was pinched, meaning something was probably wrong (because of course they couldn't get a break), the distance in his gaze meaning it was something Anima related (and that _totally_ didn't send an icy chill down Rikku's spine) - but all she could focus on was how distracted she must have been, for him to sneak up on her like that. After all, the wooden floors of the inn were far from silent, and if Tidus even knew the meaning of the word stealthy, he hadn't demonstrated such knowledge to her.

"What?" She asked, sending quick glances Holly and Iole's way, fighting back a grimace when Holly met her gaze with blatant curiosity.

"Come talk to me," Tidus said, projecting urgency with his eyes. " _Now_."

"Um, okay?" Rikku said, her confusion making her words into a question. She gestured Iole that she was taking a break, the older woman merely nodded and turned to speak to Holly, distracting the other girl from the unwavering stare she had fixated upon Rikku.

They'd just walked out of sight of the open doorway and curtain free windows when Tidus gripped her arm, tightly, and pulled her down one of the side paths leading off the water, onto the solid ground offered by the woods.

"What is it?" Rikku asked once Tidus had stopped, turning back to peer in the direction of the port they had come from like he was afraid someone had followed them. "Tidus?"

His gaze was uneasy, shifty, but eventually he looked down at her, and murmured low in her ear. "Sin is close by," he said.

Rikku stiffened. "How do you know?" she whispered back, voice equally as low and just as urgent.

"Anima can sense it," he said. "But we-"

"But we can't tell people that," Rikku realized, even as she hated herself for rationalizing it. "They'd think you were crazy, lying, or a fiend. There have been cults, you know, that worship Sin. It would be bad if they thought you were a part of one of them."

She saw Tidus shudder as he took in her earnesty, before speaking again. "Well, if we can't warn them, what _can_ we do?"

Tidus looked at her helplessly. "Sin's close by, but hasn't made any move to come closer, yet," he said. "And, in all honesty? Even if it _does_ come closer...I'm not sure there's anything we _can_ do."

To say those words out loud obviously frustrated him, but they were, unfortunately, horribly, all too true.

"You're not going back on the water," Tidus said firmly, seeing where her mind was going; somehow predicting what her next words would be. "We can't risk it, Rikku."

Grumbling, Rikku turned her face to the sky, the sun no longer in the noonday position it had been when she had entered Iole's dye-room, in the back of her inn - just passing that delicate place of late-afternoon to early-evening, not yet twilight - the sun still hovering above the horizon.

"Well," she said, voice optimistic, though mindset definitively negative. "Maybe Sin will just go away, and everything will look better in the morning."

The drawn look Tidus sent her said it all - but thankfully, he was either kind enough (or paranoid enough) not to speak the words aloud, for fear of jinxing them.

-x-

Holly sent a look askance at the sky, taking note of the sun just beginning to hover on the horizon line; sinking down into the ocean's waves, staining the world with a darkening orange hue. "Shouldn't Rikku be back by now?" She turned to Iole, voice concerned.

The older woman merely shrugged. "She's with that boy of hers," she reminded Holly. "By all accounts, still pretty green with that sword Makao gave him, but he's got a good head on his shoulders. And besides that, Rikku herself seems to know how to use those daggers of hers."

Iole's words made sense, but something about the situation still felt _off_ to Holly. Even if Rikku had decided that she had had _quite enough_ of twisting and soaking the bolts of silk in dye, she still would have come by to inform Iole that she was done for the day. Her behaviour this afternoon didn't match up with her behaviour for the rest of the past week; all the time in which Holly had known her. And so, biting at her lip, Holly tried speaking up once more. "But..."

Iole, who had quite clearly planned on brushing her concerns off, glanced up with a narrowed gaze and frowning mouth when she trailed off. "What is it?" She asked, before standing from her chair by the doorway that led to the inn's main reception room; to position herself beside Holly and see what, exactly, the girl was gaping at beyond the window.

Upon seeing it, her heart nearly stopped.

The sun, burnished orange, its light fractured by the wave slowly forming a wall to crash down on Kilika - a sight harrowing in and of itself, but defined sharply in terror by what lay between star and water - gray and rippling, a sigh Iole had not seen for many, many years.

"Sin," she breathed out, still gazing at the fin, and crouching at her feet, barrel of dye and silk still held in her lap, Holly let out a sob.

"Get up," Iole barked immediately upon staring down at the girl on the floor. "Get _up_ , girl, and run for the woods!"

Holly's eyes were glassy as she stared, shell-shocked, at the monster that she had heard about but had never seen, never truly _understood_ as a primally terrifying existence until that moment. "The temple," she choked out, through numb lips. "The Fayth will protect us-"

"Does it _look_ like the Fayth is protecting us?" Iole snapped, leaning down with some effort to _drag_ the younger girl to her feet. "Sin is here. Right now! _Run for it._ "

"But what about you?" Holly protested, some presence of mind returning to her as she hesitated at the doorway, tear tracks that glistened in the faint light of the setting sun staining her dark cheeks.

"I'm old," Iole said plainly, eyes alighting on a group of children - two of Marta's girls, it looked like, and then one of the boys from the eastern settlement - kicking around a blitzball on the platform that had been constructed alongside her inn, unaware of the danger heading straight for them. "Most people in Spira don't make it as long as I have. I lived to see grandchildren, and that's more than enough." She cut a quick glance to Holly, even as she headed for the window to yell at the kids to run for safety. "Now _go_."

One last sob breaking through her throat, Holly turned and fled. Heaving a sigh of relief, Iole once more turned to the window and opened her mouth to shout.

 _Too late_.

The water crashed down, and the world went dark.

-x-

Anima felt it before Tidus did. At first, he didn't even realize - his only clue was how he had stumbled, the world fading to gray around him for a brief moment before his confused eyes met Rikku's panicked ones, from where he was positioned on the ground below her - fallen to his knees, her hands on his shoulders.

| _I...what? Anima?_

A thrill of fear was his only answer, and then he sensed it, too - like pressure building to the crest of a wave before crashing down, Sin was fast approaching Kilika.

The sun had already begun its descent down below the horizon, darkness just now starting to set in through the warm hues of dusk - but the sky, the calm sea, simply seemed all the more sinister for it.

| **He's coming,** Anima whispered, and before Tidus could think on Anima referring to Sin as a 'he' rather than an 'it,' his entire body jerked; spasming in movements beyond his control as he stood without a word, and began to swiftly - if clumsily - retreat further into the woods.

"Tidus?" Rikku yelped, scrambling to pick herself up from her crouch and follow after him, her breath harsh and panting as she jogged to keep up with his pace.

" **Sin comes,** " Tidus' lips moved, his voice spoke - but those _weren't his words_. " **We must get closer to the temple.** _ **Now!**_ "

| _Anima!_ Tidus called out, his emotions a mix of fear, anger and confusion. _Is this - are you -_

 **Be silent, Tidus, and do not fight me,** she replied swiftly, voice stern but not uncaring. **You do not know the path to the temple like I do, and if you are buried deep enough within your own mind, there is a chance Sin will not sense you.**

Until then, Tidus had been fighting - as much as one _could_ fight when they were little more than a voice trapped in the back of their own mind - but at the points Anima had made, he calmed, and wondered.

 _Why would Anima be concerned if Sin could sense me?_

Still slightly behind them in pace, Rikku had stumbled briefly, faltering in her steps when Tidus had spoken. "I - Tidus?" she queried, shaking her head even as she began to move once more. "Are you...alright?"

" **Yes. Of course. Why?** " Anima's will behind his voice, his lips moved as stiffly as the rest of him, as if she was unused to moving physically in a human body.

For a moment, Rikku just stared at them, and even in the situation - the terror, the horror - Tidus had somehow found himself in, he couldn't help but marvel at the look she sent his way, let alone the fact that he was seeing it as though clouded over; his eyes but another's vision.

"Because you don't _sound_ it," she finally grumbled, stepping up to stand beside them before freezing. " _Tidus_ ," she whispered, eyes wide and horror-struck as she stared down the hill, in the direction of Kilika.

Following her gaze, Anima turned Tidus' eyes in the same direction. At first, he couldn't tell what she was staring at - looking at the images, secondhand through Anima, gave off a vague _cloudiness_ to the view, like morning mist; more than that, the foliage along the path was thick, swathes of green leaves blocking out pieces of his vision.

After a small nudge given to Anima - who was still all but _vibrating_ with tension - Tidus watched as, without any direct input from him, his arm moved to brush the leaves away.

A fin, he noticed. One familiar, larger than what he once, mistakenly, could have thought possible in life - and, terrifyingly, it was riding in the wake of a tsunami, cutting through the arcing wall of water like a blade.

He felt his breath catch in his throat as it registered to Anima, too - and even through her fear, he could feel her relief at the distance between them and the village.

A small, mewling sound drew their attention, and they turned to see Rikku pressing her hands to her mouth, eyes wide with tears. " _No,_ " she moaned out.

He knew what she meant. Earlier, when the sun had still been relatively high in the blue of the sky, they had, _together_ , agreed to leave Kilika for higher ground, _just in case_. Knowing of the implications of that decision, even if not willingly acknowledging them, they had, quietly, decided to place their own lives above Kilika.

Knowing that, agreeing to that - in hindsight, it didn't make watching the destruction as the wave crashed down, Sin serenely gliding away after the fact, any easier.

-x-

It gets to the point, walking slowly and shell-shocked back down to town from the path that leads to the temple - to the point, where it almost seems that the worst, most horrible part _would_ be the walk itself - quiet, and strained, drawn out with guilt and the all too human feeling of selfish relief that _their_ own lives had not been lost.

It is then, of course, that those thoughts - small and desperate as they were - are proved horribly, irrevocably false.

The majority of the eastern settlement seems intact, and the western is far enough inland, far enough away from the center that it was not touched at all - but Kilika proper, the docks, the houses, the shops and the inn - are broken piles of sea-washed wood, little more than piles of rope and splinters bobbing in the waves still left by the aftershocks of Sin's tsunami.

Once the threat of Sin had passed, the monster itself ( _himself?_ ) vanishing beyond the horizon, Anima had passed control of his body back to Tidus - who, stumbling and numb, had vowed to himself to make sure he had a way to make sure that _never_ happened again; the sensation of being a passenger in his own body more than a little terrifying.

Now, however, he almost wishes that Anima was still the one in control - because also floating in the water, rocking back and forth with the splintered remains of Kilika, are bodies. Bodies as broken as the rubble that surrounds them, the beautiful shore shattered and tainted by the blood of the very people that had kept it pristine and welcoming - and he feels the urge to throw up.

"Tidus, Rikku!" Running over to them, skipping and skidding as carefully as she can over what remains of Kilika's walkways, trying bravely to avoid and ignore the corpses surrounding them - is Hui, twelve years old. Marta's eldest daughter. "You're okay!" she says, panting as she stops before them, her hands and voice trembling; her face pale with shock, or perhaps fear. Grief.

"Hui?" Rikku says, hesitantly stepping forward to crouch down and place her hands on the younger girl's shoulders. "Are _you_ okay?"

Hui sniffles, one hand coming up to scrub fiercely at her eyes. "I can't find my sisters," she says. "They were meant to be here."

Rikku swallows, before continuing. "What about your mother?"

"Mummy's hurt," Hui sobs. "She can't help me look for them."

Rikku's shoulders slump briefly in relief, tension swiftly returning as she clearly has no idea how to tell Hui that her sisters are, most likely, dead.

Tidus doesn't have any clue either, but until that moment had simply been standing silent and still, so he stepped forward and spoke up, as best he could. "We'll look for them," he said, gently. "You should go and be with your mother."

It took a moment, but eventually his words seemed to register with Hui, who, with another sob, nodded solemnly and hurried off back the way she had come.

"This is awful," Rikku whispered. "And we're not going to find her sisters, you know."

He knew it, but did his best not to acknowledge the words Rikku had said. "She said her mother was hurt, and couldn't help her look." As respectfully as he could, he stepped over the body between him and the path that led further into Kilika, trying not to look down. "The - the survivors, they must have grouped up somewhere." He gestured the way Hui had run.

Rikku nodded, looking incredibly saddened. "How many, do you think?" she asked quietly. "How many survived?"

"I don't know," Tidus answered helplessly.

| **Very few,** Anima spoke quietly. **A hundred or so, from what I can sense.**

Tidus shuddered. The population of Kilika had not even been in the thousands - but if he was doing the math right, that was over half dead.

They walked in silence until they reached a remarkably intact portion of the walkways surrounding Kilika - where a group of about twenty adults in various states of 'injured' stood and talked quietly.

At the head of that group was - to Tidus' great relief - Makao, his face set with a heavy grief that made Tidus feel very, very young. Upon seeing them approaching, a small smile attempted to flit across the older man's face before being shut down by that crushing grief.

"I'm relieved to see you two alright," he said quietly, once they had stepped in closer. "Please - have you...seen Holly?"

Holly, who was like daughter to Makao. Holly, who last he had seen her, had been working with Iole on her silks - directly in the path of Sin's wave.

Tidus swallowed. "I'm sorry," he said. "But no, we haven't."

Makao's shoulder slumped, and he seemed to age about a decade before Tidus' eyes. "We didn't think we'd have to make use of Iole's wraps so soon," he said heavily, motioning to the men and women behind him, who were...

Who were crying, sobbing as they gently twined lengths of brilliant crimson silk around bodies pulled out of the water - a pile growing higher behind them, a heartrending number of them small enough to be half Tidus' size.

Rikku gasped next to him.

"If you two are capable..." Makao's voice trailed off. "I hate to ask this of children, but we need help," he said plainly, eyes shining with unshed tears of soul deep grief. "Please, if you are uninjured, we need aid in administering funeral rites for our people before we give them to the sea."

Rikku broke in then, a deep sorrow in her voice. "Are no Summoners able to come down from the temple?"

A bitter laugh. "Since High Summoner Ohalland, Kilika hasn't produced a single Summoner. Unless that boat meant to arrive on the morrow carries a Summoner from Besaid with it, our loved ones _will_ become fiends." He shuddered. "We cannot rely on the goodwill of Yevon to guide a Summoner our way. We must be logical, in order to protect what we have left."

"We'll help," Tidus and Rikku spoke in unison.

"Just tell us what to do," Tidus added gently.

-x-

They worked tirelessly throughout the night, not sleeping - the only breaks taken when their breath caught in their throats, eyes fogged and unclear through tears, gasping heaves eventually bringing up nothing but bile.

Tidus had, to his horror and grief, been the one to discover Holly - her face disconcertingly peaceful, she could almost have been sleeping, if not for the dark bruises marring her skin - and the fact that a good portion of her midriff was missing.

That hadn't been the first time he'd vomited, but it had been the first time the reflex had choked him to tears, breaking down on the platform, half submerged in water, he had found her on - the face of someone he had come to know, call friend, dead and still beneath him, her hair drifting in the water giving the horrible illusion of life.

He cried for Holly, and for Kilika, and nearly choked himself on the grief he felt for Zanarkand - and for himself, for the innocent boy Tidus, son of Jecht and Mira, had once been. Even if - even if he somehow found a way back home, he knew - he would never be the same again.

"We can't let Makao see this."

Rikku's voice was both grim and hoarse, and when he gathered the strength to lift his head, he saw no judgement in her eyes. Only his own horrorstruck, numb grief, reflected back at him. After their eyes had met, her gaze flicked back down to Holly, and her jaw tightened. "We'll wrap her up, and then take her to him," she said. "We'll just have to make sure we wrap her _tightly_...he doesn't need to see this."

Studiously avoiding looking at the gaping wound gored through Holly's stomach, Tidus nodded, and reached a hand through water to gently close her eyes.

"Help me lift her out," he said, and jumped down from the platform, into the knee deep water that stains of crimson red blossomed through. He carefully, delicately, lifted her legs onto the solid, dry area of the intact walkway, and then - once sure Rikku had gripped her legs tight - gripped her chest and head, pushing them up as Rikku dragged her backwards, trying not to feel how cold, how stiff she was in his arms.

By the time he had pulled himself up and out of the water, Rikku had already began wrapping the first layer of silks around Holly, cinching it tightly around her middle before looping the remainder of the bolt's length down her legs. Silently, Tidus knelt by her head, and as neatly as possible, tightly wrapped it with silk, glad despite himself when he could no longer see her face - only indistinct shapes forming under the silk. Once they were done, layer upon layer of fresh crimson silks (the very silk Holly had been working on for days) covered Holly from head to toe in deceptively simple binds.

"And one, two, three," Rikku hissed out, both grunting in effort as they hoisted up their burden. "Careful," she warned, eyes on the floor (what little of it was visible in the faint moonlight) "You don't want to trip."

Tidus, walking backwards, arms looped around Holly's chest, the cold water seeping through the silken wraps - grimaced at the thought of falling at this moment, and tried not to hear the faint _drip, drip, dripping_ coming from Holly - hoping against hope that it was water, and not blood soaking through.

"Why are we pulling them out of the water, only to put them back in?" Tidus asked, as he stepped over a particularly dangerous piece of splintered path, the edges levering upwards; sharp and deadly like stakes.

"Because if a Summoner doesn't send them, they'll become fiends. What kind of fiend you become-" with a huff, Rikku crouched before shoving Holly _up_ , to climb over the broken wood without tearing the silk. "-is dependent on where you are when your pyreflies change. If they change in the water, they won't be able to leave the water. They won't be able to hurt anyone else." She sighed. "I really, _really_ hope a Summoner turns up."

"How long?" Tidus asked, seeing the flickering lights of flames playing on the water's surface behind and beside him - in re-entering the still mostly intact area of Kilika's docks, torches had, at some point, been lit to guide people back that way.

"Hmm?" Rikku said, staring down past Tidus, where he knew they were piling wrapped bodies up, to be prayed over before being set adrift; 'returned to the waters.'

"How long does it take?" He asked soberly. "Before someone becomes a fiend."

"It varies, I think," Rikku said. "It differs from person to person. Some people never become fiends, some move on to the Farplane without help, and some..." she hesitated. "Some become the unsent."

Tidus could almost feel the horror and disgust in her tone as she said that last word, and so very deliberately did _not_ ask - he'd had enough of horror for a lifetime, he thought.

| **If a Summoner doesn't arrive by dawn,** Anima said quietly. **Then it is likely that the majority of those gathered there will have reverted to fiends. Already...** she faltered. **Already, I sense some turning.**

Tidus jolted, nearly losing his grip on Holly before regaining his footing and sense.

| _What?_ He hissed. _Anima, what do you mean?_

Shouts, coming from behind, and the sibilant, hissing chimes Tidus had come to associate with pyreflies.

"Throw him to the sea!" Makao's voice. "Do it now, before he breaks down fully!"

Rikku whimpered, and Tidus couldn't help but be glad his back was turned to the commotion behind him - glad he couldn't see it.

There was a sound of rushing feet, harsh breathing, and then a heavy splash, followed by silence - and then deep sobs.

"I'm sorry, Malika." Makao's voice was tired. "He was a good boy...he didn't deserve this."

The woman's - Malika's - sobs only intensified; a glint like the rainbow shine of an oil spill flashed in the corner of Tidus' vision, and he turned his head to face the water just in time to see a sleek, viciously spined fiend streak past, cutting through the water like a knife, pyreflies still clinging to its skin.

Tidus swallowed. Closed his eyes briefly, and with a signal from Rikku, continued onwards.

He knew the very moment Makao recognised who it was they held between them in their arms, though he didn't know _how_ he knew.

| **He's her father,** Anima whispered. **Of** _ **course**_ **he knows. Oh, that poor man.**

Tidus didn't want to look - and Rikku seemed to share that feeling, head bowed, gaze averted from Makao's as the older man stepped forward shakily, eyes wide and glassy, face bone-white pale.

"Makao?" Another woman, with a drawn face, her dark hair hanging loose and stringy - Kealii, Tidus thought her name was - stood up from where she had been crouching beside Malika, still crying over her son's fate. "What is it?"

There was a worry in Kealii's face as she glanced around, from Makao to the others standing by, either listlessly or stone-faced, and Tidus knew why. Since they'd started gathering themselves after the wave had hit, Makao had pretty much take charge - likely, his past as a Crusader aiding him in keeping his head on straight. If he were to, now, lose himself in grief - well, it probably wouldn't take long for the shattered survivors to fall completely apart.

"Holly," Makao choked out, and Tidus tried not to stare as tears spilled from the older man's eyes - he respected Makao enough to let him grieve the girl he'd raised with at least the illusion of privacy. " _Oh_ , Holly."

"Do you..." Rikku bit her lip. "Do you want us to take her to the...pile?"

Makao's shoulders stiffened, and he held his arms out. "Give her to me," he demanded, his voice a blank, empty monotone.

"Bring her over here, Makao," Kealii said gently. "We'll pray for her with the others."

"No," Makao said, taking her carefully from their arms, cradling her like she was only a child, raising a hand to stroke down her silk clad face, as if pushing hair from her eyes. "We'll put her straight to sea."

Uneasily, the rest gathered glanced at each other. "What do you mean?" Pakalo, a man maybe half a decade younger than Makao snapped out, as a man dressed in a more elaborate version of the robe Tidus had been given earlier that week from the temple looked over with worry flitting across his face.

"Pakalo, please," the man - who Tidus could only presume to be some form of priest - held up his hand, looking exhausted. "If Makao chooses for her not to be given her last rites, that is his prerogative."

"Kohel-" one of the women still crouching by Malika spoke up sharply, sending a disbelieving look the priest's way.

"I will still pray for her," he spoke over the woman sternly. "But right now, my main duty is to aid the _living_ any way I can in order to assuage their grief." He sighed, shoulders slumping. "Makao, old friend, you are _quite_ sure-"

"Holly spent her _life_ devoted to Yevon," Makao snapped out, walking to the edge of the platform and jumping down, water waist deep and splashing up. Though the water droplets landed nowhere near him, Tidus could feel himself flinch. "She was going to train as a Summoner, until I told her I needed her _safe_ , at _home_." His voice broke. "Yevon didn't help her when she was alive, and unless you can pull a sending out of your ass, it's not going to help her now that she's dead."

A chorus of scandalized gasps broke out, and Pakalo looked very nearly ready to throw himself bodily at Makao, even as the other man began to gently lower his daughter into the water - but Kohel sighed, and held him back. "Emotions and tensions are running high right now," he said. "But please, don't fight. And, Makao..." there was a warning in his eyes as he glanced the ex-Crusader's way. "You should _really_ watch your tongue."

Makao huffed out a short, humorless laugh, finally letting Holly go. Briefly, she hovered at the top of the water, before sinking down to just below the surface. The brilliant crimson of the silks enshrouding her were illuminated even through the darkness by the silver light of the moon, the loose, trailing ends drifting and twining through the water, rocked by the waves Makao created as he pulled himself out of the sea. "Either a Summoner will come, or they won't," Makao said bluntly. "Either way, they're beyond your help, Kohel."

"But you are not," Kohel reminded Makao gently. "Don't allow your grief to rule you, Makao - not when your village needs you."

Makao paused at the priest's words, and then just seemed to _crumple_ , beginning to weep as his legs gave way beneath him.

Staring at the remnants of Kilika's people before him, grieving and scared, Tidus felt completely out of place, even more so than he had felt in any other situation since arriving in Spira.

At that moment in time, standing at a loss, surrounded by people so openly expressing their heartbreak in a way he had never encountered, Tidus felt very young, and wished for nothing more than for Auron to come and _show him what to do_ , like he had done since he was a kid just as lost as he was now, just as alone as he was now.

But, no. He wasn't alone - at least not entirely, and a look at Rikku revealed she was feeling at _least_ as awkward as he was, standing there.

Perhaps feeling his eyes on her, she flicked her gaze his way, before jerking her chin back the way they had come - leading to the mostly still intact docks. Nodding his understanding and agreement, he gestured for her to lead the way in the faint, grey pre-dawn light.

"This goes down," she said lowly, once they were far out of sight and hearing range of the others, "as literally the worst day in my life."

Tidus sighed, and slid down a broken pole, pulling his knees to rest against his chest - staring at the sun just beginning to creep over the horizon, its light painted atop the waves, and admitted to himself just how _tired_ he was. "Just hope it _stays_ the worst day of your life," he said around a yawn so large his jaw cracked.

Slumping down next to him, Rikku's back was warm against his own. "If I ever experience something awful enough to top this, that's when I throw in the towel." And then, following his example, she also yawned.

| **Sleep, children,** Anima commanded, even though Tidus knew he was the only one who could hear her. Her couldn't mention this to her, though, since his mind was already drifting away... **Just close your eyes, and rest. I will watch over you.**

-x-

| **Tidus! Tidus, wake up!**

Jerking awake, suddenly alert as someone yelled directly into his ear, Tidus froze as he realized there was no-one around him - only Rikku, somehow still asleep and curled up against his back, even as he had leant forward so sharply. That only left...

| _Anima?_

| **Tidus!** To his surprise, there was joy, and relief, in her voice. **Can you sense it?**

For a single, fear stricken moment, Tidus almost thought - _seriously considered_ \- that Sin had, somehow, somewhy, returned to finish off Kilika. But since Anima would undoubtedly _not_ sound all too thrilled by that, he quickly wrote that off as pure silliness brought about by a lack of sleep.

| _Sense what?_ He asked, even he began to feel it himself - a faint buzzing, not dissimilar to what he had felt from Sin; but lighter - not as crushing, not as terrifying. It felt like the wind. Like wings, like freedom.

| **Valefor,** Anima said, grimly satisfied. **An Aeon, like me - approaching fast.**

| _The boat,_ Tidus realized. _The one coming from Besaid - it must have a Summoner on it!_

Relief, then, was all he felt.

| **Some turned while you rested,** Anima informed him regretfully. **But fewer than a dozen - and not your friend.**

Tidus closed his eyes and swallowed down the painful lump that had lodged itself somewhere in his throat throughout the course of the long, harrowing night, at the news that Holly would not become a monster. He may have only known her for a week, but in Spira - lost and confused - her smile had made things simple, the same way Rikku's attitude did.

| **Look,** Anima suddenly said, and Tidus quickly turned the way she directed him to, squinting against the bright pinkish light of the sunrise, to see a shape on the horizon, growing larger and larger - the boat.

But, squinting out, seeing that light...as beautiful as a morning as it was, Tidus very nearly hated it; hated the fact that time continued on, even after such loss and horror.

| **Red sky at morning,** Anima sighed, gazing out with him, through his eyes, and Tidus shook his head.

"That's just a silly superstition," he said, reaching up to tug at one of Rikku's feathered braids that had fallen over his shoulder, trailing down his chest - smiling slightly as, with a yelp, Rikku woke up.

"What? What?" Gazing around wildly, twitching, Rikku's hands hovered near her twin blades, as if ready for attack.

"Calm down, it's just me," Tidus said. "Look."

Stilling, Rikku tilted her head as he nodded out to the water, and gasped as she saw the boat. "Do you think there's a Summoner on there?"

"Anima says there is," he said, and Rikku's eyes lit up.

"Great," she said, voice breathy as if she had just run a marathon - or as if she had just been freed from the weight of a large, heavy burden.

| **Don't try to contact me outside of an emergency, Tidus,** Anima's voice was urgent as the boat came within such a distance that voices could be heard from the deck - looking slightly worse for wear itself, it would fit right in among the ruins of Kilika. **If Valefor senses me, it would not end well.**

| _For you, or for me?_ Tidus asked curiously, saddened (and scared, though he would never admit it) despite himself at the idea of Anima going radio silent.

| **Does it matter?** Anima answered, and Tidus supposed that, no, it didn't.

At that moment, the boat docked, and Tidus felt his mind go suddenly, bizarrely blank, as a girl rushed off of the ship before it had even fully stopped moving.

Next to him, Rikku stiffened as the girl came fully into view - a long, indigo skirt with delicate silver embroidery tracing its way across the pleats like creeper vines, a slit going up one side revealed knee-high, sturdy leather boots. A sheer, white bolt of cotton wrapped multiple times around her neck, back and chest, covering her like a halter top over the slight black camisole she wore, tied with strings across her back. Fluttering from her forearms were wraps formed of a similar cloth to her top, faint colour like the dawn just now peeking over the horizon staining the bottom of the white.

Her hair was a soft, windswept brown, framing the delicate features of her face, the common shade only serving to bring out the colour of her heterochromatic eyes; one blue, one green.

But beyond that - her mouth was drawn, her eyes tired, her clothes a mix of stiff and damp Tidus knew well after two days spent at sea, her knuckles white as her hands clenched tight around the wooden, deceptively simple staff she held.

"Greetings," she said, and matching her face, her voice was soft, warm. "I am the Summoner Yuna, from the Isle of Besaid." She sent a pinched look beyond the still, silent forms of Rikku and Tidus, where before they had wandered off to sleep, the remnants of Kilika had been gathered. "Please, if you have no other Summoners available, allow me to perform the sending."

At those words, Rikku unfroze, lunging forward to clasp at Yuna's hand. "Quick, come with me - it's _so good_ you got here..."

Rikku's words trailed off as she tugged Yuna fast down the walkways, Tidus still standing frozen - shocked unmoving and silent by the thrill of familiarity that had run through him upon seeing Yuna for what he was _sure_ was the first time - like somehow, some part of him _knew_ her - and also, he'd felt from within the wind reminiscent buzzing residing within her, _Valefor_ \- that he had been watched, as well.

"I presume that your friend is taking Yuna to perform the sending?"

Barely holding back from yelling out in surprise, Tidus whirled from where he was staring after the direction Yuna - and Rikku - had gone in, only to jump back as his eyes met a pair of blood-red, shadowed by smoky gray.

He swallowed as the older woman raised an unimpressed brow, elegance in every line of her movements, an implied threat that said _that better be_ all _your friend is doing_.

"Er, yes," he answered, totally not ashamed to admit he cowered away from the woman's glare a bit, very nearly taking a step back.

It was then, it appeared, that the woman finally got a good look at his face, because she paused, and paled, her eyes flickering across each of his features like a searchlight.

" _Wakka_ ," she snapped out, and her tone was hurried, somewhat belying the harshness of her face - the cold anger unsuited to her admittedly beautiful features; refined like that of a porcelain doll.

A group had followed Yuna down the ramp, Tidus finally saw - not just the woman, dressed in an ensemble that truly boggled the mind - but a tan, fit man with red hair styled high enough that it would make some of his teammates back in Zanarkand jealous; and - this made him take a double take - some sort of tribally garbed, anthropomorphic...cat-man.

(Okay. _Sure_. Whatever, Spira.)

At the woman's words, the man - holding a blitzball, Tidus now saw - stepped forward. "Hm? What is it, Lu-" he trailed off, gaping openly at Tidus' face, and for a moment - a brief, fleeting moment - Tidus was sure he saw grief flit across the man's face as he swallowed, hard.

"So I'm not imagining things," the woman murmured, before shaking her head, her long, dark hair spilling over her shoulder with the movement. "It doesn't matter," she said, walking past Tidus even as he simply stood there, confused. "Wakka, Kimahri."

Silently responding to the command in the woman's tone, the cat-man - Kimahri, Tidus figured, by process of elimination - stalked forwards to follow after her, and Wakka (after spending an almost uncomfortable period of time just _staring_ at Tidus' face) finally dragged his gaze from Tidus and jogged past him to catch up with his group.

"What the hell," Tidus muttered under his breath, as he also turned in the direction the rest had travelled. "What the hell."

-x-

Since encountering Rikku, Tidus had heard quite a lot about Summoners, and their expected duties - sending among them. But even so, he'd never quite managed to gain a clear picture of what, exactly, a sending _was_.

 _'It's hard to explain,'_ Rikku had finally exclaimed at one point, shrugging at him helplessly. _'Really, it's something you have to see for yourself.'_

Well, he finally knew what she meant. There were no adequate words to describe a sending.

'A dance for the dead' was too simple. 'A mourning ritual' fit better, but still did not encompass all that it was. It was the shared grief of all those gathered there - even the group from Besaid who had not experienced the destruction. It was the fear brought on by the knowledge that Sin was back. It was the tears pricking at the eyes of all those watching, disbelieving that even in such a horrible world, such a terrible reality - things could still be as beautiful as the girl named Yuna was, dancing with the prismatic lights of souls atop the water.

'Hauntingly beautiful' was the only adequate phrase Tidus could think of to describe it - to describe _her_ as she twirled, feet somehow never stumbling, the ocean spray that flicked across her face still never hiding the tears she freely wept as pyreflies danced with her, before fading off to... wherever it was that the sending took them. The Farplane Rikku had mentioned.

And afterwards, when Yuna stepped off the water, back up to the decking that they had managed to _mostly_ rebuild in a sturdy way, her clothes all somehow wet though she had not once entered into the water - when the world was still and silent, a moment frozen in time if not for the broken sobs of the mourners, as if the air itself was paying its respects; the ethereal blue flames that had sparked dying down, the funeral shrouds they had spent so long entwining around the departed now little more than pieces of crimson cloth drifting across the bottom of the ocean, the bodies returned to pyreflies - _hauntingly beautiful_ was still all that filled Tidus' mind, as he stared at the near mystical girl he was sure he had never met before but was still somehow _the familiar stranger_ , and wondered.


	10. Ninth Chapter

Stepping up onto the decks just before her mana ran out and the water gave way beneath her, Yuna sent an exhausted, faltering smile Lulu's way, as the older woman - her sister in all but blood - wrapped her arms around Yuna, sheltering her from the staring eyes of the survivors of Kilika (just like a good Guardian should), discretely wiping tears from her cheeks.

"How did I do?" Yuna murmured as Lulu pulled back slightly, to run her gaze over her Summoner's face.

"You did well, Yuna," Lulu's smile was small, but genuine, sparking warmth in eyes that strangers to the black mage would call distant; cold. "But let's try for no tears, next time, hm?"

Shuddering a breath through her teeth, Yuna nodded weakly, and Lulu's arms went from hovering around her shoulders to looping around her waist; the thick, damp material of her bow crushing against her side as her eldest Guardian tugged her across the most intact parts of the wooden paths, towards a place where the villagers, full of gratitude, had said they could stay.

Her Guardian's closed ranks around her, the tension of the day spent out at sea on a damaged, failing boat, not knowing what they would find (if anything) once they finally arrived at Kilika catching up with them - and yet, she could still feel the prickling sensation of eyes resting directly upon her.

She felt no malice from the gaze, though, only a bizarrely intense curiousity - and Valefor lay content in her mind, none of the pulsing, foreign mana that came with an Aeon detecting its Summoner's danger and urging to be called upon - so, subtly as to not alert her hyper alert (and, at times overprotective) Guardians, she flicked her own gaze in the direction she could feel the attention coming from, her line of sight eventually falling upon a blonde haired boy who seemed to be around her own age, their eyes meeting briefly just as they turned a corner, and Yuna's gaze was blocked by the still intact buildings scattered around.

Mildly confused, Yuna blinked, her mind hovering over the bizarre sensation she'd sensed when they had locked eyes.

 _That boy..._ she thought, her mind filled with sea-blue. _He felt...like Besaid Temple. Like...the Fayth._

Maybe feeling her distress, a faint, curling reassurance brushed against her thoughts as Valefor stirred. They couldn't communicate in words, the existence of an Aeon too Other, too far removed from human to allow speech without the medium of the Fayth as intermediary - but emotions could be felt and understood the same by both parties, so smiling, Yuna sent gratitude back to her single Aeon, promising to herself that Valefor would have a fellow Aeon as a companion by the evening.

"Just a short break," she said out loud, as her Guardians led her inside the still mostly-in-one-piece inn, a young woman with a bitter face and exhausted manner standing behind the counter. "We must reach Kilika Temple before noon."

The woman behind the counter cleared her throat as her Guardian's began to speak over one another in protest, the polite smile she had managed to paste on for the Summoner as she had entered slowly fading into a curl of the lips more resembling a snarl than anything else. Not wanting to push the clearly grieving woman any further, Yuna quickly shoved past Wakka to perform the prayer.

"I am sorry to bother you at this time," she said mournfully. "We were told that we could find a place to rest here."

Slowly, the woman nodded. "Everything's intact, just a bit damp," she said, a wistful smile and bittersweet tears on her face. "Iole always had the upstairs rooms ready for customers."

The woman burst into tears, but as Yuna, uncertain, reached out to lay a hand against the poor woman's shoulder as she bent her head over the desk and cried, Lulu's hand shot out, lightning fast, to grip her wrist gently, but firmly, solidly _not_ moving.

"Upstairs, Yuna," she said, herding her in that direction as she did so.

"But-" Yuna protested, craning her neck to peer back at the woman, noticing that while Kimahri was as unreadable as ever, Wakka was looking fairly uncomfortable.

"You've done _enough_ ," Lulu insisted. "Yuna. You can't help these people."

"Yes, I can," Yuna argued as Lulu opened a door leading to a room with two beds, pushing her towards the driest one and then standing in front of the doorway as Wakka closed it behind her. "You just left that poor woman out there, _crying_."

"She's grieving, Yuna. It's the natural response to losing everything." Lulu's words and tone were sharp and cutting, but her eyes - those eyes that made most people mistake her for being cold or unfeeling - were soft, filled with a desperate sort of pleading. "Tears are healthy, and she resents us, Yuna. She does not _want_ your help."

"Resents us?" Yuna said, bewildered. "But _why?_ "

"Because we weren't here," Wakka said quietly. "Because Sin was."

"But that - that wasn't our _fault_ ," Yuna protested.

"Our responsibility," Lulu clarified. "Or rather, yours, in the eyes of Spira. Sin is back, and now the Summoners are showered with praise and derision alike." She closed her eyes briefly, one hand raising slightly to brush against the powder blue stones of the necklace she had first worn on her pilgrimage with Lady Ginnem.

Yuna felt her anger cool. "Lulu," she began - and that was when the door swung open.

-x-

Tidus could honestly say he'd had one hell of a morning. After the Summoner girl from Besaid had performed her sending, breaking down all the silk-wrapped bodies into sparkling pyreflies, Makao had pulled him and Rikku aside to ask if it was okay if he travelled with the two of them to Luca - _I can't stay here,_ he'd said, voice broken. _Not now_.

The two of them had, of course, agreed emphatically - neither of them wanted the man to suffer, especially not after he had shown them such kindness in the past week; practically, he was also the strongest fighter out of the three - turning him down would be stupid at best.

After that situation had been resolved, Makao had gone to scrounge up as many supplies for himself as he could, and possibly catch a quick rest - he warned them that they should do the same, as the boat to Luca would leave that evening. And so, tired, aching and dazed from the past twenty-four hours, Rikku and Tidus had slowly made their way back to the still mostly intact (if slightly waterlogged) building that had been Iole's inn, staggering upstairs, only to open the door to the room they had been staying in and be greeted with suspicious glares and the sharp end of a shining halberd.

Tidus swallowed as beside him, Rikku yelped - the cat man not moving an inch from where deadly steel was positioned right up against his eyes.

"Um," he said. "Hi?"

"Kimahri," the Summoner girl frowned at the cat man. "I don't think they're here to hurt us."

"We're not!" Rikku yelped out from where she had ducked behind Tidus. "This is our room - we've been staying here for a week!"

It was hard to tell, what with most of his attention focused on the lethal weapon right up in his face, but Tidus was pretty sure the Summoner blushed. "Oh," she said. "It's just - the woman downstairs, she said the upstairs room was available."

"There _is_ more than one upstairs room," Tidus pointed out dryly, finally relaxing as the cat man grunted and pulled his spear back, settling against the far corner of the room with his arms crossed.

"Oh," the Summoner said again, and this time she was definitely blushing.

Tidus grinned. "It's cool," he reassured her. "We're shifting out in a few hours anyway."

Beside him, Rikku mad a faint noise of grumbling protest Tidus took to mean _but I want me bed_ , but she didn't say anything to contradict his words.

"It's...cool?" The Summoner - why couldn't he remember her name, he _knew_ she'd said it when the boat had docked - scrunched her nose in confusion. "I'm not sure I take your meaning."

"It's fine," Tidus clarified. "And besides, you look like you need your rest."

"Yes, she does," the darkly dressed, elegantly intimidating woman standing nearest to the girl said, her garnet eyes narrowed. "Thank you for your understanding."

Why did it sound like a threat when she said it?

Rikku nodded. "Well, see ya, Lady Yuna," she said, while Tidus' hamster brain kept running in panicked circles of _scary! Scary! Ahhh!_

(Whoever the woman was, she would totally get along well with Auron.)

It was then that Rikku's words broke through - _Yuna_ , Tidus thought.

It was a pretty name.

-x-

After the incident with the boy that felt like the Fayth - which she hadn't remembered to ask him about, damn it all; though considering her overprotective Guardians had been right there, listening in, perhaps that was for the best? - and his companion, Yuna was summarily shuffled to bed for a much needed nap. By the time she awoke, the sun was already high in the sky - purely blue, with not a cloud to see, radiating heat.

It was almost a cruelty to have such a lovely day follow such deep tragedy.

"Hurry, Yuna," Lulu herded her through the crowds of people working on the splintered pathways that formed Kilika's main method of travel with swift ease, a hand hovering just over the small of her back; she could feel the heavy suede of Lulu's trailing sleeve brush against her as they moved. "If we want to catch the boat to Luca this evening, you must gain the Kilika Aeon quicker than you did Besaid's."

There was no reproach in Lulu's voice, no judgement or chastisement, but still Yuna winced. It was true, gaining her Valefor – Aviva, she had named her – had taken her far longer than she had expected, the enormous mental and magical strength she had had to put out simply to make contact with Valefor, shrouded within the presence of the Fayth, exhausting her and straining her to the point she was all but in a trance, focused on nothing more than the elusive trail of the one that would become her Aeon. When she had finally, dazed and running on empty, left the Chamber of the Fayth, she had been shocked to hear just how long she had been sequestered away.

Well, she didn't have that luxury now, not if she wanted to get to Luca in time for the Auroch's to play in the league – the very least she could give to Wakka and the others after all they had done for her. And, honestly, she wanted to leave Kilika as swiftly as she could.

The workers Lulu was continuing to brush past were working silently, whereas on Besaid chores were carried out publicly, women and men calling to each other and laughing all around the isle, children running to and fro as much as they pleased. Here, the air was silent and heavy with grief, adults working because they had to fix the pathways for those who wished to travel to the temple, children nowhere to be seen – likely hidden away at a far and safe distance from shore; possibly kept at the temple.

It was a somber, listless ghost town, the only true sound the waves as they lapped at the planks of wood still half submerged, and it was a horrible, painful reminder of just why Yuna had to do this, _had_ to continue her pilgrimage.

In the back of her mind, Aviva crooned, faint whispers of comfort coming to her like the sensation of wings. Yuna smiled.

 _Thank you,_ she thought, though she knew the Aeon could not hear her.

Lulu let out a faint sigh of relief as they entered the woods, out of sight of the grieving townsfolk and their accusing eyes, the tense muscles in Wakka's back relaxing as the sound changed from the gentle waves to the rustling leaves.

Yuna smiled at the sight of her Guardians – her most precious people – in what she could only think of as their natural habitat, even if the sandy greens of Kilika were far different to that of Besaid. Kimahri stepped forward so he was standing beside her, and the glint in his eyes let her know that he was smiling, too.

"Come on," Yuna called out with a laugh, rushing ahead of Lulu and Wakka as happiness bubbled up within her, washing away the sadness of the last few hours past and pushing away her worries of the future, at least for that moment in time. "The Fayth is waiting!"

-x-

"Maester Seymour!"

If Tromell had merely called his name, then he wouldn't have paused, but with that title placed before it, whatever matter the elder Guado had on his mind could only be important – and public, meaning he couldn't blow it off.

So, Seymour Guado paused, halfway up the steps to his chamber, and turned to face the man that had once advised his father – and no matter how loyal Tromell claimed to be towards him, he'd already shown that he cared for little except the 'good of all Guado;' something Seymour himself could honestly not care any less about. The Guado had hated him, sent him away, torn even his mother away from him in the end – but when they needed a figurehead, a power and leader popular with the secular humes that ran Yevon's Church…well. Then, they couldn't get enough of him.

It was utterly laughable, for them to think that he cared for them at all. They were tools, at best.

"What is it, Tromell?" He asked, turning to face the man standing below him on the steps.

"A missive," Tromell held out a scroll clasped between sharpened talons, and Seymour very deliberately did _not_ curl his lips up when he recognised the Grand Maester's seal on it.

"Lovely," he sighed. "What does he want, now?"

"He wishes for you and the other Maester's to travel with him to Luca," Tromell answered quickly. "But it does not say why in the letter, my lord."

Seymour felt his eyebrows raise in disbelief as he stared at the scroll, before taking it from Tromell's hands and turning to continue his journey up the stairs, perusing it as he walked. "I see," he said, mind racing. "Tromell, prepare a unit to travel with me."

"Of course, my lord."

As his back was to Tromell, Seymour could not ascertain as to whether or not his servant had shown the proper amount of decorum and bowed as he took his leave, but cared little at that moment.

 _Luca_ , he thought, and wondered at how the presence of Anima, perpetually there in the back of his mind, stilled. Experimentally, he nudged at it, and was shocked as he realised just what the emotion radiating from her was.

Fear. She was scared.

The corners of Seymour's lips turned up into a smile – possibly the first genuine one he'd had in years – as he felt that faint but all-encompassing terror come from his mother.

She didn't want him to go to Luca.

Suddenly, the Grand Maester's order to travel to with him to the blitzball tournament was a _lot_ more appealing.

-x-

Buried under centuries old stone and enchantments, cloaked in the veiling warmth of his own spirit fire, Ifrit stirred.

Approaching him was the sweet, happy feeling of a young girl – Valefor, then, ensconced in the soul of one of her Summoner's; a new one, given he could feel none of the others beside her.

But, no, that wasn't quite right. A little further away, yes, given that Valefor's Summoner was approaching him swiftly and the other was not moving…he swore he could sense Anima.

Reaching out as far as he could, still trapped by stone and spirit with no Summoner to call him forth, Ifrit brushed against the awareness of the Dark Aeon he could sense, wondering idly if perhaps her son was near – was the boy finally going to commit to the pilgrimage his mother had given her life for? If so, about time. If Ifrit had had the ability to physically go and pound Anima's little idiot's head in, he would have done it long ago.

| **Ifrit?** Her voice was startled – and, concerningly – fearful. **What is it?**

| **Haven't heard you in the chorus,** he mused out loud on her silence from the past few days. He'd figured she was getting back at Bahamut, however pettily (hell, he wasn't complaining, the dragon-brat needed a pounding as much as Anima's did), but now he wondered if it wasn't something else as he felt the shock thrum through her. **You okay?**

| **Al-Bhed,** she said. **Diving around my Chamber. I didn't want them to hear my voice and search for me.**

Well, that…made sense, actually. Yunalesca had really pulled a bitch move, dumping Anima out in the ruins of Baaj – the place that had been her prison in life – where no-one would ever find her, but Anima didn't think of it that way. She had always, _always_ been relieved that no-one other than her son would wield her Aeon. That had been a big point of contention between her and the other Fayth – most of them left her well enough alone, but Bahamut had always been suspicious of the youngest of their number, citing her as being too human, too attached to her former life to perform her duty – evidenced in her lack of desire to lend her strength to Summoner's in the fight against Sin.

Ifrit didn't particularly care, himself – Anima was cool, as far as he was concerned (and a hell of a lot better than that Yojimbo bastard that had joined up about two centuries back. At least Anima was pleasant to talk to.

The Magus Sisters took her presence hard, though. They missed the fight, Ifrit knew, and couldn't understand her willingness to exist in solitary exile in Baaj.

| **You with your boy?** He asked, honestly curious, if a bit distracted – Valefor's Summoner and a group of people that must be their Guardians had just finished with the Cloister of Trials the Church of Yevon had built around him, the Summoner themselves approaching his Chamber. He could tell, because Valefor's excitement was just growing louder and louder with each passing moment.

| **Um** , Anima said, and Ifrit felt his attention flicker back to her.

| **Hang on a sec,** he murmured. **Got a bratty half-pint to deal with, here.**

| **Hey!** Valefor protested. **I'm bigger than you are!** A distinctly smug tone entered her voice as she all but preened. **And, I can** _ **fly**_ **.**

 **Oh, don't antagonize her, Ifrit.** Anima's voice was gently scolding, and even though this woman was younger than him by centuries – younger than Valefor by an even larger margin, considering the bratty half-pint had at least a decade on him – he still flinched back, recoiling like his own mother was the one scolding him.

| **Anima!** Valefor cheered. **You're here, you're here!**

It was then that Valefor's Summoner stepped into his Chamber, and Ifrit felt the world _freeze,_ as surely as if his own favoured sister was standing beside him.

| **Braska,** he thought, and even Valefor fell silent, the air solemn as the Fire Aeon took in the girl he had last seen in her father's memories as he strived to achieve Ifrit's aid for himself, so many years ago.

She'd grown up well, and beautiful. It hurt Ifrit to see it – another young, bright flame to be snuffed out too early by Yu Yevon's cursed existence.

| **Yuna won't die!** Valefor immediately protested, upset. **Bahamut promised!**

Anima's focus sharpened to a point as sharp as one of the bastard's swords, and even Ifrit felt caught off guard.

| **What?** He asked, baffled.

| **Leave it, Ifrit.** Anima's voice was cold. **If Bahamut wished us to know, he would have told us.** Her attention switched to the most confused presence among them – Valefor, still young regardless of her age, frozen forever at a mental nine-years-old. **Valefor, are you talking about the dream?**

Oh, that made sense – but if the dragon-brat was telling Valefor that would save her new Summoner, then that was nothing but a cruel platitude. Even if the idea of using the Jecht-brat worked, it could still take months; months Braska's daughter did not have. While they waited for the dream to end their dream, the pilgrimages would still continue, Summoner's would still die.

This girl would still travel to Zanarkand, and would succeed in her goals – or die trying.

Of course, Ifrit was not stupid enough to mention this to Valefor.

Instead, as Braska's daughter knelt, placing calloused fingers delicately onto the fossilized stone that made up all that was left of his permanent physical existence, Ifrit withdrew from the conversation, and could peripherally feel Anima and Valefor doing the same.

This moment, after all, belong solely to two people – the Summoner seeking to achieve an Aeon, and the Fayth testing her.

| **Come, Yuna,** he called to her, though he knew she would not pick up on the words; merely the sentiment. **Show me just what it is that you are made of.**


	11. Tenth Chapter

Hands burning so hot they were almost numb, achingly cold and slippery with sweat, Yuna knelt by the stone that held the Fayth of the Kilika temple, reaching deep within herself – past the distraction brought on by heat and exhaustion, past the faint buzz of her Valefor – to find her centre, that calm coolness that had allowed her to finally make contact with her first Aeon on Besaid.

It was hard. Though that knife-edge focus came to her easier than it had with Valefor, shining steel flashing into her mind's eye to be wielded much more quickly than that first time, Besaid _itself_ had been easy. Valefor had _wanted_ her to make that connection, establish herself as their Summoner. Ifrit, Kilika? They were harder. They wanted her to _prove_ herself worthy of becoming their Summoner – because Valefor's presence already proved that she knew how to create a link between Fayth and human, call out to the Aeon hidden within the sealed stone. This test, Ifrit's test, would be different. A heated – likely dangerous – trial by fire.

Sweat poured down her face, breaking out all over her body. Hair and clothes clung not just damp, but soaked through to her, and she just _knew_ she was going to be dehydrated to the point of near faint after she'd obtained Ifrit.

And she _would_ obtain Ifrit. That wasn't an idea or dream; it was an absolute. She was not leaving this chamber until she had contracted a second Aeon into her service, even if her Guardians tried to convince some other Summoner to enter the chamber to drag her out. She had known from the very beginning of her training as a Summoner that her journey would end not _in_ her death, but _with_ her death – and though she had no plans of dying before she could take Sin with her, even if only for a short while, she had absolutely no qualms about risking her life for the sake of the power that would let her save Spira.

The link made between her and Kilika's Fayth, however frail, thrummed with energy, and she felt a vicious grin tug on her lips as she sensed the attention of Ifrit's presence.

 _Can you feel it?_ She wondered, sending her thoughts the Aeon's way though she knew they could not hear her, not truly. _My resolve?_

From the way that bond shuddered, they had. And they knew – it was their turn; the ball was now firmly on their side of the sphere. She had stated her intentions; made her move. She would gain Kilika's Aeon of fire, or she would die trying.

There was silence, then – though the chamber had already been quiet to near the point of it, only the sound of the Hymn reverberating through the temple's most sacrosanct area, this particular silence was absolute, so deep it was almost deafening – Yuna's mind, her own thoughts, suddenly the only thing she could hear.

And they _screamed_ at her, crying out, as the world became nothing but fire.

-x-

When Rikku woke up, she was mildly surprised to discover she wasn't alone.

"Hey," she said softly, greeting Tidus who sat on the arm of the mostly dry and intact lounge she'd curled upon in the hall, what was likely hours earlier. "I thought you'd –" she yawned widely, her jaw cracking, "– left for a bit."

Tidus, who had been sitting with his back resting against the wall, one knee pulled to his chest and his head resting against it, shrugged. "The boat doesn't leave for hours, yet," he said. "And there's some, uh, Crusader thing going on – a bunch of them came from that island with Yuna; and now they're doing something up in the woods. Makao went to check it out, and I would've gone with him, but I don't exactly have any weapons on me, so I came here instead."

Rikku hummed thoughtfully. "A Crusader thing?" she said. "We should go check it out."

Tidus blinked at her, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and it occurred to Rikku that she might look slightly ridiculous – clothes askew from sleep, her braids more than likely a mess.

Oh, well – it's not like it really mattered all that much what she looked like.

"I don't have any weapons," Tidus repeated. "And besides, the woods lead to the temple. I don't want to go near the temple."

Rikku shrugged, and pushed herself up into a sitting position. "So we won't go near the temple. The woods are bigger than you seem to think they are," she told him, before reaching down to one boot to unstrap the dagger she had entwined there, as she did every night before she went to sleep. "Here; you can borrow this." Her daggers were almost short swords in their own right, and though shorter and slightly more curved than what Tidus may be used to, learning under Makao's guidance and tutelage, they would do. Carefully, she passed him a few grenades, too, with a quiet warning only to use them if he got into a fight with no other feasible way out. "They're technically machina," she said. "Anyone who saw them in action would know straight away that you got them from an Al-Bhed."

Tidus nodded his thanks, before placing the grenades into the pockets at the front of his hooded jacket, frowning slightly at the dagger as he turned it over and over again in his hands, as if the weight of it was off.

"C'mon," Rikku jumped to her feet, swinging her arms as she skipped to Tidus' side, tugging on his arm to pull him up to stand. "Let's go hunt Makao down."

-x-

Makao, it turned out, had been waiting for them.

"Do you have a weapon on you?" That question had been his greeting to Tidus when he and Rikku had arrived at the edge of the woods where the older man stood, a group of people around Tidus' age and dressed in bright, similar colours loitering behind him, just beyond the tree line.

Tidus waved the dagger Rikku had handed him in answer, still not entirely used to the lightness and lack of heft to the blade, even though he had been fiddling with it since they had walked out of the inn that had belonged to Iole; been his home for the longest time since coming to Spira from Zanarkand.

Makao had grunted in something Tidus took to be approval, before turning to the people gathered behind him. "This is the guy I told you about," he jerked a thumb back at Tidus.

Tidus shot a questioning glance Rikku's way, but she clearly had no idea what Makao was going on about either, answering him with a shrug and a curious expression of her own.

"He turned up here on his own, Makao," one girl complained. "You sent Tema off to find him for nothing."

"Wait," Tidus interjected. "What, exactly, am I wanted here for?"

"Tidus, Rikku, these sorry lot are Crusaders," Makao informed them, oblivious to or ignoring the scowls and complaints his words inspired. "There's a fiend in these woods they came here to deal with, but now they're backing out."

"We didn't come here to deal with a fiend!" The girl who had spoken up earlier glared at Makao. "We're on our way to Mi'ihen, to help with an operation that will soon take place there. All Crusaders are being called to take part." A sullen, angry look sent Makao's way. "You would know this, if you hadn't _left_ the cause."

Tidus winced, and waited for the fallout - but it never came. Makao straightened at the woman's words, his gaze narrowing as he fixated on her.

Wisely, she froze.

"An operation?" Makao asked. "What operation could possibly require _all_ Crusaders?"

Pale, a muscle in her jaw ticking, the woman's lips thinned. "Go to Luca, talk to the higher ups," she spat out. "Maybe _they'll_ take the time to inform a traitor."

Tidus couldn't be entirely sure, but he was almost certain that Makao was trying, very hard, not to roll his eyes.

"What fiend, exactly?" Rikku asked, breaking into the conversation in an effort to steer it back on track, and find out why Makao had been waiting for them here – had even known they would be coming here; or rather, why he had _wanted_ them to come here, since he had made the Crusaders send out one of their own – someone named Tema – to find them in the first place.

Makao crossed his arms over his chest as he turned to face them fully, presenting his back to the still fuming Crusader woman as he surveyed them. "The Kilika woods are home to all kinds of fiends," he said. "Most of them are pretty common… but if you go deep enough, you'll find some special ones. Like Ochu."

Rikku made a strangled sound that sent Tidus' mind into a spiral of worry once he glanced over at her to see that she had paled dramatically. "Like, Lord of the Forest Ochu? _That_ Ochu?"

"One and the same," Makao agreed.

"Wait, hold on," Tidus said. "A fiend _lord_?"

"My dad used to tell me stories about Ochu," Rikku hissed to him. "He's been around for at least three Calms that we know of."

Tidus blinked as he took that information in. Processed it. "That…is a really old fiend," he said faintly.

"And this is the boy you wanted to convince us to strike against Ochu?" The woman scoffed. "Makao, his mind is so addled he doesn't even know who Ochu _is_."

"That's what happens when you go near Sin and live to tell about it, Lisandre," Makao said in a cool manner, and the woman – Lisandre – stared at him blankly.

"But – reports said that Sin didn't actually come near Kilika," she protested. "It was the wave left in its wake that caused the damage."

Makao tensed, eyes flashing murderously for a brief moment, before his shoulders slumped. "About a week ago, Tidus and Rikku here washed up on our shores, survivors of an attack on their boat. An attack by _Sin_." He made a scoffing sound. "If they managed to live against Sin, I'm sure they'll do fine against Ochu."

"Well _I'm_ not," Rikku muttered, stepping closer to Tidus as if ready to grab his arm and yank him away.

"I don't get it," Tidus said. "If Ochu has already lived so long, he can't be too much of a problem, right? So… why bother with going to challenge him?"

The Crusaders stared at the ground, some muttering in an uncomfortable manner, while Lisandre pursed her lips mutinously.

"Sin has an effect on fiends," Makao said. "Mostly, it just scares them off – there won't be any fiends coming in to Kilika for a long while, I can assure you." He sighed. "But sometimes, on the older, stronger fiends, there's a different effect." His voice became grim. "Sin's toxin washes over the area as it passes through. It's rare for hume to be affected unless they get really, really close to Sin, but fiends are made of pyreflies; they're more at risk than perhaps anything else in this world. And the older ones, the ones that have lived long enough to gather many pyreflies and establish their existences more – when the toxin hits them, they don't run and they don't dissipate, not like other fiends. They're assimilated."

"…Assimilated?" Tidus asked, his voice uncertain. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know.

"Converted," Lisandre spoke up. "Infected, turned…" She smiled, but bitterly, and without humour. "I suppose you could say they're _adopted_ , huh, Makao?"

Tidus felt rage bubble up within him, threatening to spill over at that blatant jab at Holly, but it was just a quickly doused with a chill like ice as he processed what she had said.

" _What?_ " Rikku said, and despite himself, Tidus was glad he wasn't the only one out of the loop, for once.

"It's not common knowledge," Makao explained. "If people knew that ordinary fiends could become sinspawn, there would be panic. Mass hysteria. Normally, it doesn't happen all that much and when it does it usually isn't this close to a settlement, so it can be dealt with discreetly." He sighed, shoulder slumping. "But Sin's presence has sent Ochu into a frenzy. He's left the sanctuary of the deep wood, and is heading towards Kilika right now, all the while, slowly assimilating."

Tidus felt himself shudder, and beside him, Rikku gulped.

"So, we need to deal with this." Makao sent a short, sharp glare Lisandre's way. "They'll be helping," he said.

"Question," Tidus said. "Why do you want _us_ to help?"

It was, to him, a really good, genuine question. It wasn't even that he didn't want to help – far from it, after the night that had just passed and all the horror that came with it all he really wanted was to make sure he and the people here never had to suffer through such loss ever again – but that he didn't think he was all that capable of helping. More likely, he'd be a hindrance. He barely knew how to use a sword, let alone the comparatively tiny dagger he now held in his hands. If he tried to fight a fiend beside them, all he'd end up doing is get not only himself but the others _killed_.

 _I don't know about that_ , a voice spoke up within his mind, quiet – so quiet it was faint enough that he almost could ignore it as a whisper of stupidity that his brain liked to produce every now and then – yet sly; he could almost sense the wicked smile of the one whispering it directly into his mind. _You fought a sinspawn in Zanarkand, and that was just you and Auron. This one isn't even a proper spawn yet – just a fiend, and look at all these Crusaders. You can take Ochu_.

For a wild, disbelieving minute, Tidus almost thought that Anima had broken her promise of radio silence while Yuna was still near, before realising that no – that was just his own intrusive thoughts, sneaking into the forefront of his mind to push suicidally idiotic ideas upon him – and no matter what Auron had lamented over the years, he _did_ have a sense of self preservation, thank you very much.

"You survived Sin," Makao said, maybe seeing the conflicted denial beginning to grow on his face as he made up his mind to refuse his offer. "And you're green, there's no doubt about it – but you're _good_ , Tidus. There are people on this world that are just innately talented in certain areas, whether through a fluke of blood or spirit. And Tidus? You have the soul of a swordsman."

Tidus would have snorted, believing Makao to be making fun of him in some way, except – Rikku was nodding seriously, and even Lisandre, who knew nothing about him and hadn't been anything but antagonistic to _any_ of them since he arrived at this meeting place looked over him appraisingly, before shrugging but offering no protest or counter to Makao's words.

"It'll be good practice," the retired Crusader said as he stood there, taking in everyone's grim acceptance helplessly, and that was when Tidus knew that there wasn't any way for him to get out of this, not really.

"…Fine," he sighed.

Slowly, as if his acquiescence were the trigger needed to set the rest of them – the ones that had been hovering on the tree line, probably hoping for a way _not_ to do this (Tidus knew he was still holding out for such a miracle) began to move, at first reluctantly, and then picking up speed as the atmosphere and the reality of the moment began to hit them.

Ah, adrenalin. It really was one hell of a drug.

As Tidus took a step forward, catching himself just before he began desperately wishing for Anima's presence, Rikku laid a gentle hand on his elbow. "Hey," she said softly. "You sure about this?"

Tidus shrugged, not really sure how to express the mess of contradictory thoughts and emotions he was at that current time beyond a blinding, 'you're on camera so _smile_ you idiot' blitzball arena grin that probably looked more fake than it ever had before – but thankfully, Rikku seemed to understand, because she smiled at him sweetly, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze before letting go and pushing him forwards.

"Let's go, then!" she cheered, laughing as he caught his balance after stumbling from the force behind her shove. "We'll totally kick Ochu's butt!"

-x-

This wasn't the first time Lulu had experienced the fear of a Summoner, _her_ Summoner entering the Chamber – wasn't even the first time she had experienced it with Yuna, and boy, hadn't waiting painful, long _days_ for Yuna to emerge from the inner recesses of Besaid's Cloister of Trial been _fun_ – but the fear never lessened. It was much like heartache, in that way – it never truly faded or went away, one simply learned to deal with it better.

And by now, two Summoners already gone, this one – her little sister in all but blood and name – her third; if she didn't know how to hide how she really felt by now, then she was a failing as a Guardian.

At the foot of the steps, Kimahri waited patiently, stoically, for Yuna to exit the Chamber of the Fayth, but behind her, out of her sight but still so blindingly obvious to her, Wakka was pacing.

She didn't hold it against him, though the rhythmic sound of his footsteps striking the ground as he wore a path into it grated on her very last nerves. They each dealt with stress in their own way, and Wakka had always worn his heart on his sleeve, even as a child.

Her sigh made the hair that had fallen to rest in front of her eyes sway, and a bead of sweat rolled down her temple as she brushed said hair back into place irritably, before it could cling to her damp skin.

She would be lying if she said Kilika was her least favourite temple – far from it, in fact – but there was no denying that it was one of the more physically trying. On Besaid, she wore the dark and heavy gown she favoured because, as a mage, it was easy enough to apply a mix of water and blizzard to keep subtly cool and poised. It had always made her laugh to hear Wakka wonder at her ability to never produce sweat.

Well. She supposed she was thankful, then, that he was so distracted now, even if the reason behind that stress was something she shared with him. After all, If he noticed just how the heat of the temple was affecting her now – just how heavily she was sweating, her breath coming shallow and harsh (if quiet; she had _perfect_ self-control) – she'd lose one of her most long running and reliable means of amusement. And besides, her and Wakka had known each other all their lives; knew pretty much everything about one another. It was better to keep _some_ mystery in a relationship.

And it wasn't like she could just rely on her usual method of subtle dual-casting. This temple, Kilika's temple, was Ifrit's territory. _Fire_ territory. And though myths and legends claimed Ifrit had a deep and abiding fondness for Shiva, a hume black mage casting blizzard with no connection to the Fayth of ice would likely anger them. With Yuna sequestered away in that Chamber, caught in the grips of the fire Fayth's power, the last thing Lulu wanted to do was enrage them.

A faint sound, like grating stone, came from the area beyond the entrance that led to the chamber and Lulu could feel herself perk up as Yuna – looking exhausted and pale and dazed, but on two feet and _smiling_ – staggered triumphantly into view, one hand trailing along the wall for support that was quickly provided by Kimahri once Yuna entered the area of the cloister that the Guardians _could_ stand in.

"Yuna!" Wakka's grin was as wide as Lulu had ever seen it, and she felt a smile of her own form in response. "You okay?"

Yuna's smile was blinding. "Better than okay," she said, voice hoarse. "A bit thirsty, though."

Right. Lulu shook her head, forced herself to focus. "We'll get you some water the moment we exit the Cloister," she said. "And after that, we'll have to hurry to the docks so we can get situated on the boat."

Yuna nodded, humming in agreement, before resting her head back against Kimahri's chest where the Ronso held her, cradled to him. "Sounds good," she said, and her eyes fluttered closed.

-x-

Yuna must have fallen asleep without realising it, because one moment she had been basking in the success of gaining herself another Aeon, and the next the world was screaming.

Coming to with a gasp, breaking herself out of the last remnants of sleep that tried to claw their way deep into her mind, Yuna jack-knifed into a sitting position, blinking sight into clarity just in time to see a volley of icicles form like lethal diamonds, glinting in the late afternoon light, before rocketing down with terminal force, piercing the vine like feeler of the giant fiend that had – somehow – appeared on the steps to the temple since the time they had entered.

"What – ?" Yuna gasped as she scrambled to her feet, careless of the way her skirt bunched beneath her feet, threatening to rip.

"Sinspawn!" Lulu called, because of course that had been her ice, protecting Yuna like always. "Stay back, Yuna!"

At that word – sinspawn – Yuna had felt herself stiffen, but she frowned as Lulu continued, before shaking her head, no. She would _not_ stay in the background, waiting to be saved; Guardians were allies and friends to fight beside, not shields to cower behind.

And she wasn't the only one to feel that way. In the back of her mind, Ifrit bayed for battle, for blood, for the opportunity to make her enemies _burn_ – the screaming she had heard as she awoke truly his howl, and even Valefor seemed to be filled with anticipation.

Never before had magic come to her so easily, her first summoning of her newest Aeon far easier than even Valefor's had been, caught up in the heat of battle so instantly she was, adrenalin rushing through her, her pulse roaring in her ears like a wave about to crash down as she yelled and Ifrit dropped out of the sky, right on top of the sinspawn, ripping and tearing with claws made of fire, Yuna barely having to direct a thing as his eager battlelust bled into her mind, and then Yuna was in the fray, handing her Guardians antidotes and instructing Wakka and Kimahri to focus on the feelers while Lulu should blast Ifrit with as much fire magic as she could.

Without questioning it, Lulu immediately began spamming fire on the Aeon – Fira and Firaga both more powerful, true, but also slower and less cost effective to cast.

Her first true battle with her Aeon – she couldn't think of that farce on the boat to Kilika with Sin and the sinscales as one, she just couldn't – and it was incredible, an almost _high_ like she couldn't believe. Yuna wasn't fond of violence, had never liked fighting, not even a little bit. She'd always avoided the other kids on Besaid when their roughhousing had gotten to be just a bit too much for her, hadn't enjoyed the play fighting Wakka and the Aurochs had never grown out of – but this? This, she thought, she could get used to.

It was over almost disappointingly fast. Ifrit, bolstered by Yuna's own eagerness and the mana she fed willingly into him as well as Lulu's stream of constant fire spells made quick work of the sinspawn's main body, while Kimahri and Wakka had an almost laughably easy time keeping the vine whips off of them, distracted by the Aeon as the sinspawn was. Barely ten minutes had passed since she had awoken and called Ifrit out, and already nothing was left but sunset pyreflies.

Ifrit retreated back to wherever it was that Aeons rested in-between battles almost immediately after the sinspawn's defeat, but Yuna swore that she saw him _grinning_ at her right before he faded away completely, radiating something almost like a violent approval.

"Well done, Yuna," Lulu said, somehow not even winded – not even a hair out of place, though Yuna was _sure_ she could see a faint sheen of sweat shining over the older girl's skin. She frowned up at the sky – the setting sun just beginning to dip below the horizon. "We should hurry," she said, as Wakka and Kimahri jogged over to them from their respective positions of battle. "The boat will leave soon. Likely, the Aurochs will inform the masters of the boat that we intend to sail on it, as they left long before we did, but I would rather be safe than sorry."

Yuna merely nodded her agreement, a wave of exhaustion hitting her and reminding her just how _drained_ she was, drained physically, mentally, and magically.

Lulu must have picked up on this – she always did – because her lips thinned briefly. "We should hurry," she said, nodding to Wakka. "Pick her up," she commanded. "I'll deal long distance damage and Kimahri can handle close quarters."

Wisely, knowing just how futile it was to argue with Lulu after spending most of his life with her, Wakka didn't argue.

-x-

All in all, things were going better than expected, really. No-one had died yet, at any rate, or even gotten injured to the point where they had to leave the fight.

Tidus was damp, soaked through – not with sweat from exerting himself, but with the water from the spells the fiend lord liked to spam, though thankfully not as much as the poison attack he'd used three times already – they'd managed to dodge the first two, but the third had hit one of the younger looking Crusader boys, probably only around fourteen years of age, and though he'd taken and antidote and was still on his feet, he looked pale and wan as he slashed at Ochu's claws with his straight sword.

 _He'll fall asleep_ , Makao had informed them before they started attacking. _When that happens, he'll being to heal, and the toxin will seep further into the pyreflies, speeding up the assimilation process._ He'd looked incredibly grim as he'd told them not to let Ochu remain asleep for more than an instant.

As discreetly as he could, backing up for a moment to catch his breath as two Crusaders took his place of trying to jab at the delicate and vulnerable areas hidden beneath the rim of leaves that circled Ochu like a skirt.

 _If awakened, he'll retaliate with a high level earth spell,_ Lisandre had argued against Makao. _That's party wide damage_.

His fingers brushed lightly against the grenades he still had hidden away in his hood pockets, the Al-Bhed make of them meaning they were immune to a little water damage – after all, while diving around Baaj, Rikku's own grenades had worked just fine underwater, and with almost startling accuracy.

 _If he sleeps, we run the risk of having to deal with sinspawn, rather than a fiend,_ Makao had said firmly, cutting off Lisandre's argument. _We'll just have to deal out damage faster than he can recover, and faster than he can deliver in return_. Lisandre had scoffed, like she couldn't believe what an idiot Makao was being, but hadn't spoken a single word more of protest.

The Crusaders he had switched out with waved him down – the signal they had decided on so there weren't too many fighters on the field all at once, getting in each other's way – it was his turn to head back into battle.

He waved back, preparing to step back into the fray, his grip slick and slippery on his borrowed dagger – even his gloves were soaked through.

And then – and then –

Agony, like he'd never experienced before; a burning, acrid, poison _agony_ as it racked through his body, bringing him to his knees, trenches ripping through his mind like knife wounds. He wasn't screaming, even as he fell – the agony was too absolute to allow his body the necessary power to function enough to give him such a release, all there was was pain.

Pain, and Anima.

| **Tidus?** Her voice was near frantic. **Tidus, can you hear me?**

Oh, he could hear her, alright – her voice distorted and echoing around the pain as it reached a crescendo like the point of a blade, hovering delicately along the edge before crashing down in a wash of crystal.

 _Oh_ , he thought, again. He knew this feeling. He _knew_ this feeling.

Somewhere close by, a sinspawn had died.

| _I thought you weren't talking to me,_ he said faintly, attempting a smile as, gasping, he uncurled from where he'd fallen and clutched his knees to his chest, pushing himself into a shaky crouch as his limbs trembled with the aftershocks of the pain running through his mind.

| **I wasn't,** Anima said, but it was clear her focus wasn't on his attempt to brush what had just happened off. **Tidus, what** _ **was**_ **that?**

| _A sinspawn. I think,_ he stated hesitantly. _I've only felt something like that once before; when Auron and I killed one in Zanarkand._

Anima's only response was a worried silence, and Tidus could almost see her biting her lip – he didn't know what her face looked like, but he could picture the concern in her eyes, the way she would suck a breath in through her teeth as she grit them so clearly that it was like a whole new level of delusion had smacked him over the head.

| _I'm fine_ , he tried to reassure her. _Sure, it hurt like crazy, but it was all in my head. No lasting damage last time, and there won't be any this time, either_.

Anima sighed.

| **Sure,** she thought, and her voice was disgruntled. **Whatever you say.**

"Hey, Tidus!" Rikku's voice, worried as she peered over the clearing at where he was half collapsed against the ground. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine!" Tidus yelled back, and staggered to his feet. "Don't worry about me, just keep fighting!"

With a nod, trusting that Tidus knew what was best for Tidus, Rikku threw herself back into the fray, and Tidus followed, very deliberately not thinking about how the pain of this sinspawn's death had been far, far worse than the last one.


	12. Eleventh Chapter

Resting dazedly against Wakka's chest, Yuna felt that she _really_ should have been able to relax – at least a little, she was just _so exhausted_ , hyperaware of every ache in her body as the warmth that was Valefor curled around the wounded and pounding part of her mind – but of course, life was never simple, and where there was _one_ sinspawn, there was usually another.

At first, she didn't register what was going on – only that their procession had slowed as Wakka's arms tensed around her, and when she blinked her eyes open she saw that Lulu and Kimahri were standing tense and at the ready – a moment later, and sound filtered back into reality; the distant cries and clashes of metal against flesh that wasn't flesh that signalled a battle against a fiend – or against something far worse.

Biting at her lip, Yuna tapped on Wakka's shoulder. "Put me down," she said, and ignored how both Lulu and Kimahri radiated disapproval at her words, Lulu even _frowning_ at her. " _Now,_ Wakka."

Wakka knew better than to argue with her when she really got serious, and she knew he could hear her unbowing determination in her voice – and so he gently lowered her to her feet, even as Lulu _tsked_ in the background, hands on her hips.

"Yuna, you're _exhausted,_ " Lulu said, blocking her path as she made to walk by her. "Wakka and I can go and see what's going on up ahead – you and Kimahri can _stay here_ , where you'll be safe."

Pausing in her steps, Yuna frowned – she wanted to go and _help_ – but at the same time, she was swaying on her feet and the world was spinning around her, so she could only fold to Lulu's wisdom. "Okay," she said faintly, and slumped back into Kimahri's waiting arms. "But – if anyone needs healing, you'll come straight to me, won't you?"

"Of course we will," Lulu said, and smiled at her reassuringly. "Wakka," she snapped out as she turned, the gravity of the situation they had found themselves in showing on her face, "Let's go."

Wakka gave a short nod, and then they were both hurrying down the path – Yuna watched them go with hazy eyes, her vision swimming in the late afternoon light as it transitioned to evening.

"They'll be fine, won't they, Kimahri?" She yawned, jaw cracking wide, and Kimahri shifted her weight in his arms so that he was holding her, cradling her like he had when she was still a child.

"Yuna not worry," Kimahri said, his voice a low growl that she could feel from where her head was pressed against his chest. "They are strong."

A faint smile tugged at Yuna's lips. "Like the Ronso?" she asked, and Kimahri chuckled.

"Like Yuna," he said.

-x-

"Tidus, stay on your feet!" Riku, jumping to his side, linked and arm around his and yanked him up from the ground. She held her single dagger out at the ready to guard them as she did so – for all the good it would do her; at this point purely physical attacks were little more than annoyances to Ochu.

Gasping, choking on the water that had come from Ochu's last attack, Tidus couldn't respond verbally – so instead, simply rolled his eyes. "I'm _trying_ ," he said finally, coughing as he pulled out of Riku's grip and straightened. "Can you not _see_ that?"

Shakily, she let out a faint laugh. "Now is not the time for sarcasm, Tidus," she said, and together they stared as Ochu appeared to _still_ completely – as if gearing himself up for a large attack.

On cue, Tidus' head felt like a knife was being driven through it, right in the corner of his eye and piercing through to the back – and the air suddenly felt dry, almost painfully so, like all the water Ochu had summoned for its attacks was being drawn back into it - like the finale, grand and, well, _final_ , was approaching.

He wasn't the only one that sensed it - next to him, Rikku tensed, and across the clearing Makao barked out a sharp order to _brace for it!_ \- An order that had everyone ducking and running for cover at the edge of the clearing, just beyond the tree line that bordered the winding paths.

The air trembled, crisp like it had become _completely_ dry, but Tidus could still taste the water on his tongue – every viny, ropy tendril Ochu had wielded like a whip vibrated with a tension that travelled across the clearing like vibrations – tremors running up and down Ochu's base. Shimmers of pyreflies gleamed like flashes of sun over the fiend – as it made that one final jump from fiend into _spawn_.

" _Cred_ ," Rikku swore, with feeling.

"Cred," Tidus echoed in fervent agreement, his voice shaking just behind hers. He wasn't actually entirely sure of what the word translated to, exactly, but he had a fair guess of the _meaning_ behind it – or at least, of the kind of situation it was appropriate for use in.

Even though they were tired, soaked, fighting, and incredibly likely to die sometime in the next few minutes, Rikku still managed to summon up a slightly teasing smile for Tidus' sake. When she directed it at him, her words were quiet under the noise of the clearing – just loud enough for him to hear them. "It's not smart to go around using Al-Bhed words, you know," she said.

"Probably not," Tidus let out a weak laugh, and readied his blade. "But it's not like you can talk."

Her laugh was decidedly more nervous, almost manic. "I could die here, you know?" She whispered to him. "I'm not sure I really care about anyone fighting hearing me. Crusaders are barely even really Yevonites, I mean."

Well, that was what she said, but that didn't wipe the stress and nerves from her face. Granted, that could have just been because of Ochu – Tidus knew _he_ sure as hell was feeling that way.

He couldn't blame her for feeling that – a deep sense of hopelessness was overtaking him as Ochu – no longer merely a fiend – let out a silent scream that tore directly at his mind, forcing him to his knees as the pain of the wounds they'd already inflicted on the monster echoed through his own body, ripping through him like the ragged sobs he couldn't hold back.

"Tidus!" Rikku's voice called out for him, but he couldn't answer her – not only because his throat was locked with agony, but because most of his attention was focused on the other presence beside him, speaking to him; warm and familiar.

| **Tidus,** Anima's voice whispered – or possibly even shouted; her voice was so muffled that he couldn't be sure the problem wasn't on _his_ end. **Call for me.**

Shock rippled through him.

| _What_?

| **Call me, Tidus! Do it,** _ **now!**_

| _How?_ His mental voice was as choked as his real one was. _What are you even talking about?_

The dissonant second heartbeat that had resided in his chest since encountering Anima picked up its pace – once more clearly something that belong to someone _not him_ , when it had settled into something echoing his own, only slightly out of time with his own bodies rhythm – thrumming into a harsh, warm life, becoming less of a heartbeat and more of a _drum_ beat, ringing out into his ears.

His hands twisted into claws, fingers digging into the damp ground beneath him. Tidus was suddenly incredibly aware of each separate grain of soil under his fingers, under his nails. Of the water pressed against his skin and his breath condensing in the air before him – as the temperature dropped like something big was just hovering on the precipice of coming into existence.

A hand rested tentatively on his back, and Tidus flinched. "What's wrong?" Rikku's voice was tense. "If you're hurt, we should get you out of the thick of things." There was an undercurrent to her tone that Tidus could barely pick up on himself – _is it Anima_ , she was asking.

 _Not hurt_ – he tried to choke it out, but couldn't. "Get them away." His voice was a hiss, and she leant closer, as if to hear him better – he pressed his lips up to her ear and repeated himself. "Get them away from Ochu, _now_."

For a moment, she didn't move. But then the meaning of his words seemed to register, and she was up on her feet in a flash, running for Makao and Lisandre, yelling for them to fall back.

" _What?!_ " Lisandre's voice, loud and pitched high with her disbelief. " _What the hell are you on about?_ "

"Tidus is going to do something!" In Rikku's words there was no sign of the fact that she actually had no single clue on what, exactly, he was planning on doing.

" _What do you mean, he's doing something?"_

"He's just doing it! Get out of the way!"

At that moment, Tidus blocked Rikku out. He focused in on himself, on Anima – hyper aware of the world around him, like he had been of the ground beneath him. He could sense, _feel_ , when the Crusaders finally listened to reason and obeyed Rikku's cries; the earth trembled slightly to brush against his senses and whisper to the two of them that the way was clear.

Tidus breathed in. Breathed out. And then, following Anima's whispered instructions – more of a brush of knowledge against his mind than a set of actual words spoken, though – he let _go_.

The ground trembled again, as if Ochu was about to summon another earth shaking spell – he was peripherally aware of the Crusaders bracing themselves as Rikku hurried back to his side to loop arms over his shoulders –

And then pyreflies bloomed up from the earth as it tore apart with a groan, shining bright and uncorrupted unlike the ones that swarmed around and from within the once fiend, blinking hello as they rose up from the glyphs that flashed to life on the breaking ground, the whipping air – solidifying into a shape that was totally worthy of the surprised shouts and instinctive screams the Crusaders let out as it stared them down.

Rikku's yelp was a sharp intake of breath right against his ear. He winced, and would have flinched away if not for her tight, iron grip on him – her nails dug into his shoulders; she hadn't appeared to have noticed.

"Is that…" Her voice, shaking, trailed off. She shook her head to clear it, the damp trails of her braids whipping against Tidus' neck. "Is that – ?"

"Anima," Tidus confirmed, and squinted up, blinking away pain as best he could to get a glimpse at the fully realised summoning of his Aeon.

She was, in a word, terrifying.

The stone her Fayth had resided in hadn't given enough of a clue to her true appearance for Tidus to be able to imagine anything even _close_ to this – he couldn't blame the others for their screams, or for the fear he could feel flood the air.

Her one visible luminescent eye stared directly at him, and Tidus felt himself unfreeze – fear had instinctively bubbled up in him, too, but Anima's presence was still warm in his mind, and intelligence shone in that eye – as well as a very expressive worry; it was _definitely_ Anima he was looking at, and she wasn't going to hurt him, wasn't going to hurt anyone except the spawn across the clearing from her.

He felt drained, damn near completely exhausted – but when Anima's presence curled in his mind, nudging him for a boost of his own mana to help with hers, he gave it freely. He felt that power build up within him, within her, within the air –

And then the world was _fire_ , agony tearing through him and claws of ice tugging his nerves through his skin, wrecking him, breaking him.

Anima was a powerful summon. Whatever she'd done, it had finished Ochu off in one hit – and once more, Tidus _felt_ it as the sinspawn by him died, it's wailing soul song a death scream off grief in the back of his mind.

He choked – throat tight and swallowing back tears – and collapsed sideways as Anima was suddenly front and centre in his mind again, her summoned form breaking back into pyreflies and vanishing into the ether. If it hadn't been for Rikku beside him, catching him on his way down and laying him out gently on her lap, he would hit the ground hard.

The world was swimming around him, but he retained just enough lucidity to see Rikku's worried eyes looking at him from above, hear the footsteps thundering in their direction.

Crusaders loomed over them – only Makao was recognisable.

"A Summoner," he said quietly – addressing Rikku, Tidus could tell. "Why didn't you tell us he was a Summoner?"

Rikku's eyes were wide, and Lisandre's voice cut in – low and sharp. He didn't hear the exact words she spoke, though –

He closed his eyes, and the world went dark.


End file.
